Question

The cost y of parking a car in an hourly lot, where x is the number of hours a car has been parked, can be represented by the following equation: y=3x². What does the 2 tell you about the cost of parking?

1) The cost of parking is multiplied by 2
2) The cost of parking is squared
3) The cost of parking is divided by 2
4) The cost of parking is added by 2

Answer 1

In the equation y=3x² for parking cost, the number 2 indicates that the number of hours parked is squared, meaning the parking cost increases exponentially with time. Option 2 is correct answer.

Step-by-step explanation:

The equation y=3x² describes the cost y of parking a car in an hourly lot based on the number of hours x the car has been parked. In this equation, the number 2 is the exponent applied to x, which means that the number of hours is being squared, not multiplied, divided, or added by 2.

Therefore, as the number of hours increases, the cost increases exponentially because each additional hour causes the cost to increase at a rate that is proportional to the square of the time parked.

Thus, the correct answer to what the 2 tells you about the cost of parking is option 2) The cost of parking is squared.