Nicole babysits on the weekends. She charges a flat fee of $10 and then $5 per hour. If she made $40 on Friday night, how many hours did she babysit?

Question

My class is working on Writing Equations and its very confusing for me.

Answer 1

In this problem you have to pay attention to the "flat" fee , this means that is one time charge and to help you to solve the problem this is familiar equation that probably remember from previous math classes. Y=mx+b

b= is the one time fee. So Nicole flat fee = $10 or b=10

then 5 dollars per hors means the slope or the "rate" that she is charging per hour, in this case "5 dollars per hour" . so m=5.

y=mx+b

y=5x+10. That equation represents Nicole hourly rate plus a flat fee. Let solve the problem by finding "x" of the number of hours that she made.

Y=5x +10

40= 5x +10

40-10 = 5x solving for x, 30=5x diving by 5 in both sides 30/5 . = 5x/5, x=6

So Nicole babysits 6 hours on Friday.

To verify this , let use the equation . y= 5x +10 . y= 5(6) +10= 3 +10 =40