could someone help me with math?

Question

The cost of a long-distance phone call is $0.36 for the first minute and $0.28 for each additional minute. If the total charge for a long-distance call is $5.68, how many minutes was the call?

 

The call was for _______ minutes?

Answer 1

Let's write an algebraic expression to represent the cost of the phone call. We are given that the first minute is $0.36 and that each additional minute is $0.28 for a total of $5.68. Let m represent the cost of each additional minute.

 

0.36 + 0.28m = 5.68

 

Solving for m, we get 19 additional minutes. Recall that m represents each minute after the first minute, so the length of the call was actually 1 minute + 19 minutes, or a total of 20 minutes.

Answer 2

Hello Jay,

 

Let's see what we have here.

 

1st minute = 36¢

each add'l minute = 28¢

 

The cost of the call was $5.68

 

Let's let x = # additional minutes.

x+1 = total number of minutes.

 

Then,

0.36 + 0.28x = 5.68

 

Solve for x

0.28x = 5.32

x = 19

 

But recall that I defined x as the number of additional minutes after the 1st minute.

Because of this we need to add 1 to x to get the total number of minutes of the call

x+1 = 19+1 = 20

This was a 20-minute call.