The school band sells carnations on Valentine’s Day for $3 each. It buys the carnations from a florist for $0.50 each, plus a $18 delivery charge. When will the cost of the carnations be equal to the revenue from selling them? How many carnations does it need to sell to reach this point?
Let's denote the number of carnations as x. We can express the revenue as [tex]3x[/tex] and the cost as [tex]0.50x+18[/tex].
To find when the cost and revenue will be equal, we just equate the two expressions. We need to solve for x to find the number of carnations needed to reach that point.
For the revenue to be equal, the number of carnations sold should be equal to 7.2, BUT, realistically speaking, we can never have 0.2 of a carnation. So, the cost of the carnations will NEVER equal the revenue of selling them. 7 carnations sold would have a slightly smaller revenue compared to the cost and 8 carnations sold would have a larger revenue.