SOLUTION: A man buys a certain number of bolts for $40. The following week the following week the shop has a sale and each bolt costs 40 cents less. At the new price he could have bought fiv

Algebra ->  Coordinate Systems and Linear Equations  -> Linear Equations and Systems Word Problems -> SOLUTION: A man buys a certain number of bolts for $40. The following week the following week the shop has a sale and each bolt costs 40 cents less. At the new price he could have bought fiv      Log On


   

Question 605685: A man buys a certain number of bolts for $40. The following week the following week the shop has a sale and each bolt costs 40 cents less. At the new price he could have bought five bolts more for the same amount of money. How many bolts did he buy?
Answer by mathie123(224) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let b be the number of bolts that he bought and p be the original price of the bolts
From our question, the first time he went to the store we get:
bp=40
The next time we get:
%28b%2B5%29%28p-0.40%29=40
We can set these two equations equal to each other and solve for b:
bp=%28b%2B5%29%28p-0.40%29
bp=bp-0.4b%2B5p-2
0.4b=5p-2
b=%285p-2%29%2F0.4

Unfortunately since we do not have the originaly price we cannot get the exact number of bolts but if we were given an original price we could substitute it into the formula above and solve for b.
Hopefully this helps a bit?