A soft drink costs $1.65, and each refill for the drink costs 0.95. If you have $4.50, how many refills can you purchase?

1 Answer
Nov 11, 2016

There are 3 refills

Explanation:

color(purple)("The trick with algebra is to aske yourself: how would I do this with just numbers.")color(purple)("Then put in letters for the unknown values.")

color(green)("initial cost + total refill cost = total cost")

color(purple)("Let the count of refills be "r)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

=> color(brown)($1.65+r$0.95=$4.50)

Dropping the dollar sign and subtracting color(blue)(1.65) from both sides we have:

color(brown)(1.65color(blue)(-1.65)+r0.95=4.50color(blue)(-1.65))

0+r0.95= 2.85

Divide both sides by 0.95

rxx0.95/0.95=2.85/0.95

But 0.95/0.95=1 giving

r=2.85/0.95=3

So there are 3 refills