Question

Members of a running club volunteer to collect garbage they find on the ground one day each month. At the initial cleanup, the members collected six thousand, five hundred pounds of garbage. The club finds that they collect forty five% less trash at each subsequent monthly cleanup.

Define a unit for each quantity in the worksheet. Then enter a variable for the time and use this variable to write an expression for the amount of garbage collected.

Answer 1

Answer:3,575 lbs, or 45% less

Explanation:

Unit for garbage collected: pounds (lbs)

Unit for time: month (mo)

Let's use "t" as the variable for time (in months).

Expression for the amount of garbage collected:

For the initial cleanup: 6,500 lbs

For subsequent cleanups: 45% less garbage collected each month, which means they collect 55% of the previous month's garbage. So, the expression for the amount of garbage collected each month (starting from the second month) would be:

0.55^(t-1) * 6,500 lbs

where "t" represents the number of months after the initial cleanup.

Note that for t=1 (i.e., the first subsequent cleanup), the expression evaluates to 0.55^(1-1) * 6,500 lbs = 6,500 * 1 = 6,500 lbs, which is consistent with the initial cleanup. For t=2, the expression evaluates to 0.55^(2-1) * 6,500 lbs ≈ 3,575 lbs, which is 45% less than the amount collected in the first subsequent cleanup.