Nadia has a box of quarters and dimes on her dresser. There are 5 times as many quarters as dimes in the box. The total number of quarters and dimes is 96. How many of each coin is in the box?
A. 16 dimes and 80 quarters
B. 20 dimes and 76 quarters
C. 24 dimes and 72 quarters
D. 28 dimes and 68 quarters

Question

Nadia has a box of quarters and dimes on her dresser. There are 5 times as many quarters as dimes in the box. The total number of quarters and dimes is 96. How many of each coin is in the box?
A. 16 dimes and 80 quarters
B. 20 dimes and 76 quarters
C. 24 dimes and 72 quarters
D. 28 dimes and 68 quarters

imstuck · Answer

Ok, this one is a matter of getting the dimes and the quarters into the same variable so you can solve it.  If you had a resulting system of equations that you had to solve simultaneously, you could have 2 variables, but you only have one equation so you need one variable.  Let's get the variables in terms of dimes.  The problem tells us that there are 5 times as many quarters as dimes. That means that for every 1 dime, you have 5 quarters, right?  So dimes = d and quarters = 5d.  See that?