20 Carmen and her mam callect cans of food for a food drive. Carmen collects
5 times as many cans of food as her mom. Together, they collect 60 cans of
food. Which equation can you solve to find the number of cans of food
Carmen’s mom collects?
A
E
C
D

To tackle this can-collecting dilemma, let’s assign a variable! If we say is the number of cans Carmen’s mom collects, then Carmen collects . Together, they gather a delightful total of 60 cans, which gives us the equation or simplified, . So, the correct equation to solve for Carmen’s mom’s cans is !

When solving this equation, the common mistake is to overlook dividing by the total coefficients. To find out how many cans Carmen’s mom has, you’d divide by , which will lead to her collecting cans! Remember to check your work, as it’s easy to confuse multiplication with addition.