2009 AIME II Problems/Problem 1

Problem

Before starting to paint, Bill had $130$ ounces of blue paint, $164$ ounces of red paint, and $188$ ounces of white paint. Bill painted four equally sized stripes on a wall, making a blue stripe, a red stripe, a white stripe, and a pink stripe. Pink is a mixture of red and white, not necessarily in equal amounts. When Bill finished, he had equal amounts of blue, red, and white paint left. Find the total number of ounces of paint Bill had left.

Solution

Simple Solution

Let the stripes be $b, r, w,$ and $p$ , respectively. Let the red part of the pink be $\frac{r_p}{p}$ and the white part be $\frac{w_p}{p}$ for $\frac{r_p+w_p}{p}=p$ .

Since the stripes are of equal size, we have $b=r=w=p$ . Since the amounts of paint end equal, we have $130-b=164-r-\frac{r_p}{p}=188-w-\frac{w_p}{p}$ . Thus, we know that $130-p=164-p-\frac{r_p}{p}=188-p-\frac{w_p}{p}$ $130=164-\frac{r_p}{p}=188-\frac{w_p}{p}$ $r_p=34p, w_p=58p$ $\frac{r_p+w_p}{p}=92=p=b.$ Each paint must end with $130-92=38$ oz left, for a total of $3 \cdot 38 = \boxed{114}$ oz.

Solution 1

After the pink stripe is drawn, all three colors will be used equally so the pink stripe must bring the amount of red and white paint down to $130$ ounces each. Say $a$ is the fraction of the pink paint that is red paint and $x$ is the size of each stripe. Then equations can be written: $ax = 164 - 130 = 34$ and $(1-a)x = 188 - 130 = 58$ . The second equation becomes $x - ax = 58$ and substituting the first equation into this one we get $x - 34 = 58$ so $x = 92$ . The amount of each color left over at the end is thus $130 - 92 = 38$ and $38 * 3 = \boxed{114}$ .

Solution 2

We know that all the stripes are of equal size. We can then say that $r$ is the amount of paint per stripe. Then $130 - r$ will be the amount of blue paint left. Now for the other two stripes. The amount of white paint left after the white stripe and the amount of red paint left after the blue stripe are $188 - r$ and $164 - r$ respectively. The pink stripe is also r ounces of paint, but let there be $k$ ounces of red paint in the mixture and $r - k$ ounces of white paint. We now have two equations: $164 - r - k = 188 - r - (r-k)$ and $164 - r - k = 130 - r$ . Solving yields k = 34 and r = 92. We now see that there will be $130 - 92 = 38$ ounces of paint left in each can. $38 * 3 = \boxed{114}$

Solution 3

Let the amount of paint each stripe painted used be $x$ . Also, let the amount of paint of each color left be $y$ . 1 stripe is drawn with the blue paint, and 3 stripes are drawn with the red and white paints. Add together the amount of red and white paint, $164 + 188 = 352$ and obtain the following equations : $352 - 3x = 2y$ and $130 - x = y$ . Solve to obtain $x = 92$ . Therefore $y$ is $130 - 92 = 38$ , with three cans of equal amount of paint, the answer is $38 * 3 = \boxed{114}$ .

2009 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by First Question	Followed by Problem 2
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