Captivating Calculations: Hair-raising Halloween Word Problems

1.  Andy has a number of friends who like dressing as zombies for Halloween. Two years ago, four of his friends dressed as zombies. Last year, that number increased by fifty percent. This year, the number increased by one third over last year. How many of Andy’s friends are dressing as zombies this year?
2.  Many of Maria’s friends do not like molasses candies, so they trade them away for other Halloween loot. Since Maria likes molasses candy, she traded away six bags of chips, ten candy bars and a dozen suckers and got an average of three and a half molasses candies for each item. How many molasses candies did she get in trade?
3.  Nathanael couldn’t remember exactly how many cupcakes Haley and Virgil made for the Halloween party, but he did remember that all together Haley, Virgil and he had made one hundred fifty-six cupcakes. He also remembered that he and Haley had made one hundred ten and he and Virgil had made ninety-four. How many did each person make?
4. Rolando made two dozen ten-inch cubes out of wood for the Halloween dance and put a strip of fluorescent tape on each edge of each cube, so they would light up under the black lights. How many feet of tape did he need for all the cubes?
5.  Mrs. Gibbs and her husband put all of their spare change into a monster bank (because it is shaped like a monster, not a pig, or it would have been a piggy bank) throughout the year. At Halloween, she donates all the change to the local homeless shelter, but not before her sixth-grade students help to count it all. This year, they counted one thousand three hundred fifty-two quarters, nine hundred eighty-five dimes, six hundred forty-three nickels and six hundred thirty-five pennies. How much did Mrs. Gibbs donate this year?
6. Micah and Lewis went trick-or-treating. Micah started at 6:45 pm and Lewis started at 7:05 pm. When Micah finished at 8:15 pm, he had visited one hundred fifty houses. When Lewis finished at 8:45 pm, he had visited one hundred forty houses. They spoke on the phone at 9:15 pm to compare notes. Did Micah or Lewis spend longer trick-or-treating? By how much? Which one had a younger brother with them?
7. Elva’s older sister told her that her chance of getting chocolate while trick-or-treating was about one in four. After she was done for the night, Elva tallied up her results and found she had ninety-three chocolate items and two hundred seventy-five items that weren’t chocolate. According to these results, was Elva’s sister correct? If not, what is the correct ratio?
8. If each bat eats eight hundred bugs per hour for five hours per night, how many bugs would a colony of nifty bats eat in a week?
9. For the skeleton dance, Leif needed to make a playlist of songs. Each song was about three and a quarter minutes long. He needed a playlist that lasted four hours and thirty minutes. How many songs does he need?

Answers

1. 4 × 1.5 × ( 4 3 ) = 8 Last year there were 6 zombies and this year there were 8
2. (6 + 10 + 12) × 3.5 = 98
3. N+H = 110, H = 110−N and V = 94−N. Substitute into N+ H+ V = 156 results in N+ 110−N+ 94−N = 156 which simplifies to N = 48 Substitute into the first equations to get H = 62 and V = 46
4. There are 12 edges on a cube so each cube requires 10 × 12 = 120 inches of tape. For 24 cubes, 120 × 24 = 2880 inches of tape are needed which is 2880 ÷ 12 = 240 feet of tape.
5. (1352×0.25)+(985×0.10)+ (643 × 0.05) + (635 × 0.01) = 338 + 98.5 + 32.15 + 6.35 = 475 Mrs. Gibbs and her husband donated $475.00 to the homeless shelter this year.
6. Micah went from 6:45 pm to 8:15 pm which is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Lewis went from 7:05 pm to 8:45 pm which is 1 hour and 40 minutes. Lewis spent longer trick-or-treating by 10 minutes. Note that Lewis did go to 10 fewer houses which could have been the result of many factors which might include having a younger brother with him. The last question could have many answers as long as there is a rationale given.
7. Using a part-to-part ratio, Elva had 93:275 chocolate to other items which is about 1:3. That may not be exactly what Elva’s sister meant though since if you add up all the items, there are 368 items and 93 of them were chocolate items, so the ratio would be 93:368 which is about 1:4.
8.  800 × 5 × 50 × 7 = 1,400,000
9. Converting 4 hours and 30 minutes to minutes results in 4 × 60 + 30 = 270 minutes. To figure out the number of songs needed, divide the time by the length of each song: 270 ÷ 3.25 = 84 (rounded up). Rounding up is needed or there might be a bit of a quiet period at the end of the dance. Leif would probably be best advised to gather a few extra songs just in case.