combining like terms to simplify each expression

Question

shea sells bracelets at the farmers market. for each bracelet she sells, she spends $1.50 on beads and $3.00 on hardware. she also pays $10 per day to rent a booth. write an expression that represents sheas total expenses for selling x bracelets per day in 4 days

Answer 1

Kate, here’s how I would approach the question.

First, give names to the quantities involved:

Let b be the number of bracelets

Let d be the number of days

Let x be the amount of expenses

Next, translate the words into equations:

x = 1.5*b + 3*b + 10*d

Since we are told that d is 4, we can rewrite this as:

x = 1.5*b + 3*b + 10*4

Since assignment is called “combine like terms”, let’s do that. It means “move all the terms with b together and move the numbers together”.

In this case, we can add the b terms together:

x = 4.5*b + 10*4

and go ahead and simplify the numbers

x = 4.5*b + 40

This is your expression for the total expenses for 4 days of bracelet sales.