Pearson Algebra 1 Common Core, 2011
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Pearson Algebra 1 Common Core, 2011 View details
7. Graphing Rational Functions
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Exercise 23 Page 710

Practice makes perfect
a We are told that two pizzas are shared evenly between n people. Since each pizza contains 960 Calories we have a total of 960 * 2 =1920 Calories for n people. Let's write an equation to describe the number of Calories (C) consumed by each person with division.
C=1920/n We are also told that each person eats a banana, which contains 100 Calories. This means that we need to add 100 Calories per person.

C=1920/n+100 Great! We wrote the function. Now we will graph this function. To do so let's recall the general form of a rational function. y=a/x- h+ k We need to have the asymptotes of the function to graph it. In this form, the asymptotes are the lines x= h and y= k. Let's now identify the values of h and k for our function. C=1920/n- 0+ 100 We can see that h= 0 and k= 100. Therefore, the asymptotes are the lines x= 0 and y= 100. With this in mind, we will make a table of values to plot the graph easily.

n 1920/n+100 C=1920/n+100
3 1920/3+100 740
5 1920/5+100 484
10 1920/10+100 292

Let's now plot and connect obtained points with a smooth curve. Since the number of people and the number of calories cannot be negative, we will use only Quadrant I to draw the graph.

graph of the rational function
b We want to find the approximate number of people who must share the pizzas in order for each person to consume about 500 Calories. To do so we will substitute 500 for n into the equation that we found in Part A. Let's do it!
C=1920/n+100
500=1920/n+100
400=1920/n
400* n = 1920
n= 1920/400
n=4.8
n ≈ 5
We found that the pizzas must be shared between approximately 5 people in order for each person to consume about 500 Calories.