Question 1884: The computer club went on a field trip to a computer museum. the trip cost $240 to be paid for equally by each club member. The day before the trip, 4 students decided not to go. This increased the cost by $2 per student. How many students went to the museum?
Answer by longjonsilver(2297)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! the thing we want is the number of students, so let us define that x = number of ORIGINAL students.
so, originally, the cost per person, C = 240/x
With 4 students then dropping out, we have a new cost per person, C+2 = 240/(x-4).
Equating these 2 equations for C (ie get C= in both equations), we get that
multiplying both sides by x(x-4), to get rid of the denominators, leaves:
Multiplying out the brackets and simplyfying gives:
We can factorise this as (x+20)(x-24) = 0
Hence x=-20 or x=24. So our answer is x=24.
However, this is the original number of students (see the definition i gave of x. Hence there were 20 students who went to the museum.
cheers
Jon.
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