So, we know that you earn $17 per 2 hours. We also know that we earned $42.50. Now, we just need to find the hours! We can do this by using a cross multiply.
$17 is directly correlated to 2 hours of work. Therefore, to find the hourly wage we should divide it by 2:
$8.5 = 1 hour
$42.50 = x hours?
Now cross multiply:
$8.5x = $42.50
x = 5 hours
Therefore, your answer is 5 hours!
Hope this helps!