One month,ruby worked 6 hours more than issac,and Mary worked 4 times as many as ruby.Together they worked 126 hours

Answer 1

I like to have my students look at a problem like this one and determine which person, if we knew how much he or she worked, would tell us the number of hours for all of the rest of the people in the question. We know that Ruby's hours are based on Isaac. We know that Mary's are based on Ruby. So if we knew Isaac's we would know the rest. So we will assign a variable to Isaac. Lets create a list of the people to use in our equation:

Isaac: x

Ruby: 6 + x

Mary: 4(6 + x)

We can create our equation by adding each person up for the total of 126 hours

x + 6 + x + 4(6 + x) = 126

We can then simplify it by combining like terms

2x + 6 + 24 + 4x = 126

6x + 30 = 126

This can be continued to a solution for x to find how many hours Isaac worked, which would then allow you to determine the hours for each of the others.

Answer 2

One month, Ruby worked 6 hours more than Isaac, and Mary worked 4 times as many as Ruby. Together they worked 126 hours

I like to have my students look at a problem like this one and determine which person, if we knew how much he or she worked, would tell us the number of hours for all of the rest of the people in the question. We know that Ruby's hours are based on Isaac. We know that Mary's are based on Ruby. So if we knew Isaac's we would know the rest. So we will assign a variable to Isaac. Lets create a list of the people to use in our equation:

Isaac: x

Ruby: 6 + x

Mary: 4(6 + x)

We can create our equation by adding each person up for the total of 126 hours

x + 6 + x + 4(6 + x) = 126

We can then simplify it by combining like terms

2x + 6 + 24 + 4x = 126

6x + 30 = 126

This can be continued to a solution for x to find how many hours Isaac worked, which would then allow you to determine the hours for each of the others.