Download Consuming Candy

Consuming Candy
Tina Roberts
At Gardner's Gourmet Candies, a package of gummy bears cost 13 cents less than
caramels and 28 cent more than jaw breakers. You can buy one of each for a total of
$6.39. How many cents does one package of gummy bears cost?
For this problem, I knew I would have to know some algebra to come up with some
equations for the Excel program. I knew gummy bears cost 13 cents less than caramels
and 28 cent more than jaw breakers, making them the most expensive of the three
candies. I knew I only had $6.39 to spend on all three candies. I had to find the price of
one package of gummy bears.
I used Excel to put information into four columns. The first column was labeled gummy
bears. The second column was labeled caramel with a formula (=a2 + .13). The third
column was labeled jaw breakers with a formula (=a2-.28). And the fourth column was
labeled total with a formula (=a2+b2+c2) because I needed to total the amount of money
I would spend in all on the three types of candy packages. Once the chart was set up, I
could guess and check entering different amounts of dollars and cents in the first column
(gummy bears). I highlighted and drug the information down so I would get values for
the second, third, and fourth columns after I entered several values into column one. I
concluded gummy bears had to be $2.18 per package, caramels were $2.31 per package,
and jaw breakers were $1.90 per package. I noted that as the gummy bears increased by
$.01, so did the caramels and jaw breakers. Meanwhile, the total increased by $.03. This
increase is because each type of candy increased by $.01 and since you have 3 types of
candy, hence the $.03 increase. If the gummy bears, caramels, and jaw breakers had
increased by $.02, the total would have increased by $.06 because each of the three typs
of candy would increase by $.02 and $.02 * 3=6
An extension to this problem would be to increase the total amount of money spent. For
example, instead of spending a total of $6.39, you could spend $7.50 and figure out how
much you would spend on each package of gummy bears.