Chelsea Flores

Free -Think Friday

Broken Egg Problem

Problem Statement
A farmer was on her way to the market and came across a pothole while driving.
Unfortunately all of the eggs fell out of their containers. All of the eggs were left broke due to
the pothole. She went to the farmer insurance company to help her out. Although she has no
receipt to know how many eggs she had bought. She only remembers that when she paired the
eggs in groups of 2,3,4,5, and 6, one egg was always left over. But once she paired in them
groups of 7, no eggs were left over. With this given information, how many eggs did the farmer
have? Is there different possibilities?

Process Description
At first our group went about and did their own thing in trying to solve the problem. From
there we came together to see where we were, and what we understood. The first approach
that we looked at was creating charts for the numbers 2-6 and then adding one. The one because
it would be for the remaining egg that the farmer counted.

2 3 4
3 4 5
5 7 9
7 10 13

We continued to complete the chart and then look for similarities. When the chart was
created I looked to see if there was any sort of pattern with these numbers that I would get. I
created a table as was looking to find numbers that would get an answer of 7. 2(3) +1=7,
3(2)+1=7, 4(5)+1=21, 5(4)+1=21, 6(1)+1= 7. After finishing this our group thought that our
answer for the problem would have to be odd because in order to get all those answers above,
using the number 1,3,7 would give you those answers above, and those are odd numbers.
Another approach was that noticed by of my group members, was that to get a number
that ended in 1, we needed to multiply the 7 by a number that ended in 3. From here we related it
back to creating charts. This time the chart was with numbers that only ended with the number 3.
For example, 3,23,33,43,53, and so on. If these numbers were to be plugged into the equation it
would work for them. This was able to help us in solving for our final answer.


Solution
After trying different ways for coming to a final conclusion to this, the final equation we
thought would work for this would be 2a+1 = 3b+1 = 4c+1 = 5d+1 = 6e+1 = 7x. The numbers are
those numbers 2-6 because for these is when it would apply of being left with one extra egg, and
at 7 she was able to see that no eggs were left. The number 7x is for the multiple of 7 that would
apply to the equation. If you were to substitute 301 for 7x, it would work, and the equation would
be true. With knowing that, we came to a conclusion that the number of eggs the farmer had to
begin with was 301.

Self- Assessment/ Reflection
Working in a group with these individuals was great. Whenever I was stuck with
understanding their methods, they were more than happy to explain to me. During the course of
working through this problem the freedom to explore the problem was seen within our group. I
think that because our group respected eachothers ideas, not only that but also building off their
ideas, and working together efficiently, is how we were able to come to a final answer. As a grade
I would give myself a 9 out of ten. Even though I was not one of the people who came up with the
formula for solving this problem, I was always trying and see what I could do, and comptobute to
the group.
A mathematical practice that I was able to see and apply would be Make sense of
problems and preserve in solving them. When I started off the problem, relating it to other
problems that made sense to me was helpful. Creating charts and seeing how the difference was
something that I had done in previous classes, and I was able to use now. When I was having a
difficult time understand or even seeing how to keep moving forward, I would make sense of what
I understood and then ask for help from my group members.