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A microprocessor plant that manufactures computer chips costs $\$400,000$ per day to operate. It costs $\$30$ to produce one chip which sell for $\$190 dollars. How many chips does the plant have to make to break even on one day operation?

Let X be the number of chips I need to make.

400,000 = 190X-30X (but I'm not sure this is even right). I'll continue anyway, I'll check it later...

400000 = 160X

X=2500\quad ?

2500 * 190 = 475000$ (its wrong)

Can someone help me? I think that formula I have is very wrong and I can't figure out another one...

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    You should calculate number of chips*(selling price per chip - manufacturing cost per chip) to get 400 000. In this case you have just calculated number of chips*selling price per chip. So, what is $2500 \times (190-30)$?2011-05-22

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You seem to have the correct answer (definitely the correct method to solve this). Why do you think "2500 * 190 = 475000" means you are wrong? Remember that the number of chips also takes into account their manufacture cost.

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    I still don't understand why you consider the solution wrong. There is no sense in expecting 400*190 to come out 400000, since what you are trying to "break even" here is the total costs against the total revenues, and the total cost is larger than 400000.2011-05-22
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Your method of checking the answer is incorrect. $2500\cdot 190=475000$ is the total gross income from producing 2500 chips, but the cost of producing those 2500 chips is not just 400000, but $400000+2500\cdot 30=475000$, since each of the 2500 chips costs \$30 to produce.