Question

21 Last year Chelsea and Sonya took 236 pictures during Thanksgiving. This year Chelsea and Sonya each took the same amount of pictures. All together they took 500 pictures in both years. How many pictures did each girl take at Thanksgiving this year? Please write an solve an equation, make sure you show your work

Answer 1

Let 'c' represent the number of pictures Chelsea took.

Let 's' represent the number of pictures Sonya took.

For last year's Thanksgiving, c + s = 236

For this year's Thanksgiving, let 'x' represent the number of photos taken in total. x = c + s, where c and s are two integers that are the same (c = s).

And we know that for both years, c + s + x = 500.

As we know that c + s is already 236 from last year, we can remove c + s from the equation in bold and replace it with 236 instead.

236 + x = 500.

Now we have to isolate the x term.

x = 500 - 236

x = 264.

We know that x = c + s, where c and s are the same, so we can just use one of the variables and double it (so you either get 2c or 2s - it doesn't matter which one you pick because they're both the same).

2c = 264

c = 132

c = s

s = 132.

Both took 132 pictures this year.