Question

Solve the following:
Radha takes some flowers in a basket and visits three temples one-by-one. At each temple, she offers one half of the flowers from the basket. If she is left with $3$ flowers at the end, then find the number of flowers she had in the beginning.

Answer 1

Let total number of the flowers be $x$.
Then, flowers offered in first temple= $\frac{x}{2}$ [Half of $x$]
Flowers offered in second temple = $\frac{x}{4}$ [Half of $\frac{x}{2}$]
Flowers offered in third temple= $\frac{x}{8}$ [Half of $\frac{x}{4}$]
Number of flowers left at the end$=3$
According to the question,
$x-(\frac{x}{2}+\frac{x}{4}+\frac{x}{8})=3$
$\Rightarrow \frac{8x-(4x+2x+x)}{8}=3$
$\Rightarrow 8x-7x=24$
$\therefore x=24$
Hence, total number of flowers she had in the beginning is $24$.