Question

Internet access on a cruise ship costs $20. There is an additional fee of $8 per 15 minutes of use. Tom writes the equation f = 8h + 20 to represent the fee f for h hours of use. Describe his error and correct the equation.

Answer 1

Tom's equation for the internet access fee should reflect the $8 charge per 15 minutes. The corrected equation is f = 32h + 20, where f is the total fee and h is the number of hours of internet usage.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student, Tom, has made an error in writing the equation for the internet access fee on a cruise ship. The correct representation of the fee, f, for h hours of use should account for the fact that the $8 fee is for every 15 minutes, or quarter-hour, of use. Since there are 4 quarters in an hour, the charge per hour would be $8 times 4, which is $32. Therefore, the correct equation should include this rate of $32 per hour plus the initial $20 access fee. The revised equation is f = 32h + 20.