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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Cups of Tea and the Eleven Plus


There are quite a few facts eleven plus children need to learn – but one vital one is that a pound of tea makes between 150 and 200 cups of tea! Every time your eleven plus child offers to make a cup of tea it may be worth-while checking how many questions are left to do!

You could take time out to explain that tea is classified for popular distribution by the method of curing and the size of the leaf.

Green tea is from leaves that have withered and fermented.
Back tea comes from leaves that have fermented before heat treatment.
Oolong tea is only partly fermented.

The words pekoe and orange pekoe refer to the size of the leaves.

We all know that most tea is a blend of several  varieties and qualities. Wholesale merchants will buy their tea from many different plantations. I grew up in Zimbabwe where tea was grown in Chipinga and the Honde Valley. Both areas were close to the town where I went to school. A little eleven plus question springs to mind.

A wholesaler, some years ago, bought 20 kilo of tea at 60p per kilo, 50 kilo at 52p and 30 kilo at 44p. If the wholesaler mixed the three kinds together, what was the average cost of the mixture per kilo?

20 kilo at 60p costs 1200p
50 kilo at 52p costs 2600p
30 kilo at 42p costs 1320p

100 kilo of the mixture costs 5120p

The average cost per kilo is 5120p divided by 100 = 51p.

A kilo of tea should make about 500 cups! Ask your child to estimate what the wholesaler was paying for a cup of tea!







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