Help with farm animals

[judysalaz]

A goat, a horse, and a cow mistakenly enter a farmer's wheat field and eat some stalks of wheat. The horse eats twice as many stalks as the goat, and the cow eats twice as many stalks as the horse. The farmer demands 5 tou of wheat from the owners of the animals to replace what was eaten. How much wheat should be replaced by the goat's owner? the horse's owner? and the cow's owner?
A. Let x be the amount of wheat (in tou) that should be replaced by the goat's owner. What is an expression in terms of x for the amount that should be replaced by the horse's owner? by the cow's owner?
B. write and solve the equation to find x. To the nearest tenth of a tou, how much wheat should be replaced by each animal's owner?

 

[tkhunny]

One piece at a time.

H = the amount the Horse Eats in tau
x = the amount the Goat Eats in tau (I really don't like using 'x' for this, but that's waht we are given.)
C = the amount the Cow eats in tau

The horse eats twice as many stalks as the goat

H = 2*x

and the cow eats twice as many stalks as the horse.

C = 2*H = 2*(2*x) = 4x

Total Eaten is H + x + C = 2x + x + 4x

Now what?

 

[tkhunny]

Interesting question, but it makes no difference.

 

[stapel]

Whadda heck is a "tau"?

The original poster spelled it as "tou", which may indicate that the original exercise was written in Chinese, from which one unit of volume is commonly transliterated to English as "dou". One dou is equal to about two and a quarter gallons. :wink: