need help with my homework

Question

A pre-paid cell phone company charges $12.4 as a monthly access fee and $0.11 per minute of calling time.

Express the monthly cost C in terms of minutes of call time.  C=0.08x+13.45 What will the monthly cost be if you make 299 minutes of calls this month?

Answer 1

Hi Rose!

I can help you write an equation for the first sentence of the problem, but you may need to clarify what it is asking you to do with the equation:  C=0.08x+13.45

A pre-paid cell phone company charges $12.4 as a monthly access fee and $0.11 per minute of calling time.

Express the monthly cost C in terms of minutes of call time.  

Since C represents the monthly cost, we can let x represent the number of minutes of calling time.

Anytime a problem says something like " $0.11 per minute of calling time " I know that I will need to multiply the $0.11 by the number of minutes of calling time to determine the total cost for the calling time. Therefore in my equation, that would appear as "0.11x", where you multiply 0.11 by x number of minutes. Now in this scenario, the company also charges a $12.40 monthly access fee, so you would need to add that fee to your cost for the minutes "0.11x".

Therefore your equation is C=0.11x+12.4

Now, to find the cost (C) for 299 minutes, you can substitute 299 in for x, which represents the number of minutes of calling time.

Equation: C=0.11x+12.4 where x=299

C = 0.11(299) + 12.4

C = 32.89 + 12.4

C = 45.29

Therefore, when you make 299 minutes of calls, your monthly cost would be $45.29

Let me know if you have any other questions! Hope that helps. :)