Question

There were a total of 107 students and chaperones on a field trip to the museum. If the number of chaperones was thirteen less than seven times the number of students, what is the number of students?

Answer 1

There are `92` chaperones and `15` students.

Explanation:

So I'll set up an equation to help solve this, with `s` for students and `c` for chaperones.

`c=7s-13`
`s+c=107`
`s+(7s-13)=107`

The bottom equation is essentially saying that students plus chaperones (which equals 13 less than 7 times the number of students) equals 107 people.

You can remove the parentheses from this equation:

`s+7s-13=107`

And combine like terms:

`8s=120`

And divide both sides by `8`:

`(8s)/8=120/8`

To get:

`s=15`

Because `c=7s-13`, you can plug in `15` in for `s` to get:

`c=7(15)-13`
`c=105-13`
`c=92`

And to double check:

`92+15=107`

Meaning that there are `92` chaperones and `15` students. Not sure why there are so many chaperones for so few students, but there we are.