How do you find the restricted values of x of an rational expression

Question

How do you find the restricted values of x of the rational expression 8/x-5

Answer 1

For this type of problem, the only restricted values will be ones that make the expression in the denominator equal to 0 ( since division by 0 is undefined). So all we need to do is set the expression in the denominator equal to 0, solve for x in that expression, and that will give us the x value that we need to restrict. So we let x - 5 = 0 and, solving for x, we have x = 5. Thus, 5 is our restricted value for x and we can state this as x ≠ 5.