You've come home after a long hard day of school. You put down your bookbag and take a break before you begin your homework.
Then, in the distance, you hear that music...
The ice cream truck is coming!
Quickly, you empty your pockets to see if you have enough change to buy that $1.75 double-crunchy, triple-nutty ice cream bar you crave. (Tax is included.)
As you dig through your pockets, you discover that you have:
- 3 quarters
- 6 dimes
- 12 nickels
- 18 pennies
Do you have enough money? Quickly, how do you figure it out? Well you know that:
- a quarter = 25 cents or .25
- a dime = 10 cents or .10
- a nickel = 5 cents or .05
- a penny = 1 cent or .01
So, you do a quick set of math problems:
 |
Yes! You have enough money for the ice cream bar with some change left over! Unfortunately, by the time you've counted your money, the truck has passed your house! Bummer.
Let's make a spreadsheet that will do these calculations for you quickly. Once you have the formulas in place, all you have to do is change the number (quantity) of each of the coins you have.
STEP ONE:
Type in all the labels for your spreadsheet. You should have:
- a title at the top
- a list of all the coin types
- a column for the quantity of each coin
- a column to calculate the value
- a label for the total.
Your spreadsheet should look something like this:
STEP TWO:
Enter a quantity for each of your coin types (the number of coins you have of each type).
Then, you should create a formula to calculate the value of each type of coin. For example, for quarters, the formula would be:
=B2*.25
Three quarters has a value of 75 cents (or 0.75).
Add similar formulas for each coin type.
STEP THREE:
Enter a formula that will add ALL the values of the coins to calculate the total amount of change you have.
STEP FOUR:
Select the cells showing the values, and re-format them so they look like money. Click the 1.0 button on the toolbar, and your numbers should display with 2 decimal places.
Finally, format the TOTAL into the currency format. Select the cell, then click the $ buttton on the toolbar. You should get a dollar sign and 2 decimal places.
Your completed project should look something like this:
Finally, put different numbers in the Quantity column to make sure your fomulas work.
