Question

The school librarian, Mr. Marker, knows the library has 1,400 books but wants to reorganize how the books are displayed on the shelves. Mr. Marker needs to know how many fiction, nonfiction, and resource books are in the library. He knows that the library has four times as many fiction books as resource books and half as many nonfiction books as fiction books. If these are the only types of books in the library, how many of each type of book are in the library?
Draw a tape diagram to represent the total number of books in the library.

Answer 1

Answer:

200 resource books

800 fiction books

400 nonfiction books

Step-by-step explanation:

Let's define x as the amount of resource books that are in the library. As he has four times as many fiction books as resource books, that means he has 4*x fiction books.

We also know he has half as many nonfiction books as fiction books, that is 1/2*4*x = 2*x nonfiction books.

We just need to find out the value of x.

We know there are 1,400 books in total and there are just 3 types of books. Therefore, if we sum all of them, we get the 1,400.

Written in math language, that is

x + 4x + 2x = 1,400

7x = 1,400

We divide by 7 on both sides and we get

7/7x = 1,400/7

x = 200

Now we replace the x with 200 to know how many books he has of each type:

Resource books = x = 200

Fiction books = 4*x = 4*200 = 800

Nonfiction books = 2*x = 2*200 = 400

Therefore, there are 200 resource books, 800 fiction books and 400 nonfiction books in the library.

The tape diagram is attached as an image.