Question

Kwamee created a coffee blend for his cafe by mixing Kona beans and Fuji beans. Kona beans cost $11 per pound and Fuji beans cost $7.50 per pound. He mixed a total of 23 pounds of coffee beans and spent a total of $197.
Write a system of equations that can be used to determine how many pounds of Kona and Fuji beans Kwamee bought.

Solve the system of equations to determine how many pounds of Kona and Fuji beans Kwamee bought.

*Show both the equations and the solution.

Answer 1

Let's use K for Kona and F for Fuji. The system of equations has to be a balanced system. For example, you can't mix the number of pounds of beans with the cost for each because pounds and dollars are different and you can only combine like terms...pounds with pounds and dollars with dollars. So let's start with the number of pounds. Since we don't know how much of each he bought we have the 2 unknowns, F and K, but we DO know that he bought 23 pounds total. So the first equation is
K + F = 23
Now let's see what we can do with the dollars. Again, we don't know how much he bought of each kind of coffee, but we do know that Kona beans cost $11 per pound and that Fuji beans cost $7.50 per pound, and we know that he spent a total of $197. So let's set that up:
11K + 7.50F = 197
Those are your 2 equations. It doesn't say you need to solve them, so you're done.