A wholesaler wishes to sell 100 pounds of mixed nuts at $2.00 a pound. She mixes peanuts worth $1.50 a pound with cashews worth $4.00 a pound. How many pounds of cashews must she use?	Options.
A) 40 B) 45 C) 50 D) 55 E) 60
From the question stem we know that we need a mixture of 100 pounds of peanuts and cashews. If we represent peanuts as x and cashews as y, we get x + y = 100. Since the wholesaler wants to sell the mixture of 100 pounds @ $2.50, we can write this as: $2.5 * (x + y) = $1.5x + $4y   From the equation x + y = 100, we can rewrite y as y = 100 - x and substitute this into our equation to get:   $2.5 * (x + 100 - x) = $1.5x + $4(100 - x)   If you solve for x, you will get x = 60, and therefore y = 40. So the wholesaler must use 40 pounds of cashews.   You can substitute into the original equation to see that: $250 = $1.5(60) + $4(40)   Answer is 50.
<result>C</result>
A wholesaler wishes to sell 100 pounds of mixed nuts at $2.00 a pound. She mixes peanuts worth $1.50 a pound with cashews worth $4.00 a pound. How many pounds of cashews must she use?