Question

Kayla wants to plant a garden that contains only tomatoes and squash. She only has enough space to plant 40 vegetables, and she only has $80 to spend. Tomatoes cost$1 per plant and squash costs $3 a plant. Let t represent tomatoes and s represent squash. Write a system of equations for the question above. How many tomatoes and how many squash can Kayla plant? Answers 1. Solving a system of equations, we see that she can plant 20 tomatoes and 20 squashes. ### How many tomatoes and how many squash can Kayla plant? Let’s define the variables: • t = number of tomatoes. • s = number of squaches. The space is enough for 40 plants, then: t + s = 40 And we know that she has a total of$80 to spend (we assume that she spends it all)
t*$1 + s*$3 = $80 Then our system of equations: t + s = 40 t*$1 + s*$3 =$80
To solve this, we can isolate one of the variables in the first equation, for e xample if we isolate t, we get:
t = 40  – s
Now we can replace that in the other equation:
(40 – s)*$1 + s*$3 = $80 Now we can solve that for s:$40 – s*$1 + s*$3 = $80 s*$2 = $40 s =$40/\$2 = 20
Then she will buy 20 units of squash, and the other 20 plants will be tomatoes.