In a classroom, notebooks are equally distributed among the children. Each child receives 1/8 as many notebooks as the number of children. If the number of children is halved, each child gets 16 notebooks. How many notebooks were distributed in total?

Explanation

Let the original number of children be n. Each child receives n/8 notebooks, so the total number of notebooks is n²/8. If the number of children becomes n/2 and each child gets 16 notebooks, the same total is 8n. Hence n²/8 = 8n, giving n = 64. Total notebooks = 64²/8 = 512.