Chelsea and Aslan
(page 75)

Here's a solution from a student at Oberon Middle School:

Dear eeps.com,

I'm a student from Oberon Middle School and my 8th grade math group has figured out the answers for the Chelsea & Aslan problem. The answers are the following:

Minh weighs 110.5 lbs. Chelsea weighs 35.5 lbs. Bengt weighs 121.5 lbs. Aslan weighs 10.5 lbs.
Thank you.

eeps responds

Thanks for your answer! Here are some questions...

1) What State are you in at Oberon Middle School?

2) How did you get your answer?

3) How do you know that yours are the ONLY answers?

Dear Tim,

Thanks for responding so fast. First, Oberon is in the state of Colorado and we got our answer by using the clues to make equations. The equations we made were...

Minh+Chelsea= 146
Bengt+Chelsea= 157.
Bengt+Aslan=132.
Chelsea is less than 4 times Aslan
Bengt is greater than 120
Menh+Aslan=121

Then we guessed on a weight for Bengt. We knew he was greater then 120 so we started small and began with 121 lbs. We, then, plugged in the number into our equations and solved each equation one-by-one using the information from the previous equation. This didn't work because when we plugged the numbers in, the equations didn't solve correctly. Although, we figured the answer couldn't be too far off. It definently wasn't 122lbs. so we plugged in 121.5 and solved for the rest of the animals' weights. This number agreed with all of the equations.

And, to answer your third question, my group and I don't know any other answers to this problem but, we're sure that there are.

Thank you.

Okay, folks, what do you think? Are there other solutions?

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