A Very Juicy Word Problem

By | Added Nov 10, 2015

Today’s word problem is our little homage to a school cafeteria favorite—the juice carton! Give it a try—we’ll update this article with the answer tomorrow.

A cafeteria has three different kinds of juice cartons. 1/6 of the juice cartons contain cranberry juice, 1/3 contain orange, and the remaining 30 contain apple juice. How many cartons of cranberry juice are there?

Find out all you ever wanted to know about the history of the juice carton and its ingenious design here (via madehow.com). P.S. They’re recyclable!

Update (11/11/15): Here's the solution to our word problem! First we need to find the fractional part that the apple juice represents. 1/6 + 1/3 = 1/6 + 2/6 = 3/6 = 1/2. Since half of the juice is cranberry and orange, that means the other half must be apple juice. If half of the cartons contain apple juice and there are 30 cartons of apple juice, that means there is a total of 60 cartons of juice. Cranberry juice represents 1/6 of the total number of cartons. 1/6 of 60 is 10, so there are 10 cartons of cranberry juice!