SOLUTION: When a child emptied her coin bank, she had a collection of pennies, nickels, and dimes. There were a total of 50 pennies, and a combined total of 30 nickels and dimes. If the coin

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Question 1146173: When a child emptied her coin bank, she had a collection of pennies, nickels, and dimes. There were a total of 50 pennies, and a combined total of 30 nickels and dimes. If the coins had a total value of 250 cents, how many nickels and dimes were in the bank?
Answer by math_helper(2461) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!



The starting point is to immediately subtract the 50 pennies to arrive at 200 cents worth of nickels and dimes.
N = number of nickels
30-N = number of dimes
5N + 10(30-N) = 200
-5N + 300 = 200
5N = 100
N = 20 nickels --> and (30-20) = 10 dimes
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Check: 5*20 + 10*10 = 100 + 100 = 200 cents (that plus the original 50 pennies gets you to 250 cents in the coin bank).

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Some tutors will show you other ways to solve it. Those are probably fine methods, I just prefer the mechanical method above.