The Snooze Button is Now a Math Problem

Yesterday I came across this problem while planning a lesson on ratio and proportion:"When I woke up this morning, I hit the snooze button and got 10 extra minutes to sleep.  Every time I hit the button, I get 10 extra minutes.  At this rate, if my alarm first goes off at 5:30 and I hit the snooze button 4 times before I actually get up, what time do I get up?" After careful thinking, it turns out that I wasn't actually interested in this problem at all.  I was actually interested in asking questions such as:Does it make since…
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Rotten Tomatoes, Linear Equations, Ratio and Proportion

This problem came about because I was talking about solving the equation 4x + y = - 14 for y and there was a little confusion about how I could  subtract 4x from - 14.  Although this was really a problem with combining like terms, I figured that now was as good of a time as ever to reinforce the idea of combining like terms. "Yaletta bought an unknown number of tomatoes at $4 each, but when she got home, she found out that all of the tomatoes were rotten.  In addition, she checked her receipt and realized that the…
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