A mother buys a box of sweets. She kept 1/3 of the sweets and divided the rest between her 3 children. The eldest got 8 sweets while the youngest got half as many. If there are 27 pieces of sweets in the box, how many sweets did the second child gets? Let's answer step by step:
The mother kept 27 x 1 / 3 = 9 pieces of sweets. So there were 27 - 9 = 18 sweets that were divided between the 3 children. The youngest child got 8 / 2 = 4 sweets. So the eldest and the youngest got a total of 8 + 4 = 12 sweets. Therefore, the second child gets 18 - 12 = 6 sweets. The answer: 6.