Question

Rachel has 24 red candies and Maya has 18 green candies. They want to arrange the candies in such a way that each row contains equal number of candies and also each row should have only red candies or green candies. What is the greatest number of candies that can be arranged in each row?

Answer 1

Answer: 6 candies per row.

Step-by-step explanation:

The restrictions that we have are:

Each row has the same number of candies.

Each row has only one color of candy.

We want to find the largest possible rows.

We have 18 green candies and 24 red candies.

Now, to arrange them in rows of equal numbers, we should find a common factor between 18 and 24. (particularly, we want to find the largest common factor between 18 and 24).

Now, to find common factors we first take the smaller number, and we divide it by different numbers, starting by 2 (we want to divide by small numbers, so the result will be the largest factor)

18/2 = 9.

Now to see if 9 is also a factor of 24, we see if the quotient between 24 and 9 is a whole number.

24/9 = 2.66

This is not a whole number, so 9 is not a common factor.

Now we divide by the next number, 3.

18/3 = 6.

24/6 = 4.

So 6 is a common factor of 18 and 24.

Then each row will have 6 candy.

And we will have:

18/6 = 3 rows of green candy.

24/ = 4 rows of red candy.