Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 4.2 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:

You are out walking and see a group of rhinoceroses (which each have two horns and four legs) and triceratopses (which each have three horns and four legs). If you count 31 horns and 48 legs, how many triceratopses are there?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:

Since each animal has 4 legs, there must be 48/4=1248 / 4 = 12 animals. Each triceratops has 3 horns and each rhinoceros has 2, so if there are tt triceratopses and rr rhinoceroses we get t+r=12t + r = 12 and 3t+2r=313t + 2r = 31. Subtracting twice the first equation from the second gives t=7t = 7.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.