Question 1 of 5
A community garden tracked the number of adult and student volunteers on two workdays. On Saturday, there were 18 volunteers total, and together they worked 54 hours. On Sunday, there were 14 volunteers total, and together they worked 38 hours. Assume each adult volunteered the same number of hours on both days, and each student volunteered the same number of hours on both days. If an adult volunteered 4 hours on each day and a student volunteered 2 hours on each day, how many adult volunteers were there on Saturday?
Explanation
Let be the number of adult volunteers on Saturday and be the number of student volunteers on Saturday. From the total number of volunteers, . Since each adult worked 4 hours and each student worked 2 hours, the total hours on Saturday give . Substitute into the hours equation: . Simplify: , so , and therefore . This gives . So there were 9 adult volunteers on Saturday.
Concept summary
Use two pieces of data from a table or context to write a system of equations, then solve by substitution or elimination to find the unknown quantity.