SOLUTION: Eli Al’s has a collection of marbles. If he gives away 3/5 of his marbles to his friend and then buys 20 more marbles, he will have 100 marbles in total. How many marbles did Eli

Algebra ->  Percentage-and-ratio-word-problems -> SOLUTION: Eli Al’s has a collection of marbles. If he gives away 3/5 of his marbles to his friend and then buys 20 more marbles, he will have 100 marbles in total. How many marbles did Eli      Log On


   



Question 1205102: Eli Al’s has a collection of marbles. If he gives away 3/5 of his marbles to his friend and then buys 20 more marbles, he will have 100 marbles in total. How many marbles did Eli Al have originally?
Found 2 solutions by ikleyn, math_tutor2020:
Answer by ikleyn(52864) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
.
Eli Al’s has a collection of marbles. If he gives away 3/5 of his marbles to his friend
and then buys 20 more marbles, he will have 100 marbles in total.
How many marbles did Eli Al have originally?
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        Good problem to solve it MENTALLY by a BACKWARD method.

     +----------------------------------------------------------------+
     |   We start from the end and move backward to the beginning     |
     |   step by step, using reasoning and making simple arithmetic.  |
     |   No equations are needed, so this method is good even for     |
     |         4-th grade young students of primary schools.          |
     +----------------------------------------------------------------+


At the end, Eli Al has 100 marbles.


Hence, immediately before he bought 20 marbles, he had 100-20 = 80 marbles.


Hence, these 80 marbles were  1+-+3%2F5 = 2%2F5 of marbles he had initially.


Hence, initially he had  %285%2F2%29%2A80 = 5*40 = 200 marbles.


ANSWER.  Initially, Eli Al had 200 marbles.

Solved.

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To see many other similar and different solved problems,  look into the lesson
    Simple arithmetic word problems to solve by a backward method
in this site.

Learn the method from there.



Answer by math_tutor2020(3817) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!

x = number of marbles he started with
(3/5)x = number of marbles given away
(2/5)x = number of marbles he keeps
(2/5)x+20 = amount after buying 20 more marbles


(2/5)x+20 = 100
(2/5)x = 100-20
(2/5)x = 80
x = 80*(5/2)
x = 200


Another way to solve
(2/5)x+20 = 100
5*( (2/5)x+20 ) = 5*100
5*(2/5)x + 5*20 = 500
2x + 100 = 500
2x = 500 - 100
2x = 400
x = 400/2
x = 200


Check:
He started with 200 marbles.
3/5 of which is (3/5)*200 = 0.6*200 = 120
He gives away 120 marbles and keeps 200-120 = 80. Note how (2/5)*200 = 0.4*200 = 80.
Then he buys 20 marbles to get 80+20 = 100 total at the end. We have confirmed the answer.

Another way to check:
(2/5)x+20 = 100
(2/5)*200+20 = 100
0.4*200+20 = 100
80+20 = 100
100 = 100