Question

Lauri spent ​5% of x hours at her​ part-time job. What is x if ​5% of x is about 10 hours? Explain how you estimated and which property of equality you used to find x.

Answer 1

To estimate x, we can use the fact that 5% is approximately equal to 1/20. Therefore, if 5% of x is about 10 hours, then we can estimate that 1/20 of x is also about 10 hours.

Multiplying both sides of the equation 1/20 x = 10 by 20, we get x = 200.

To check our answer, we can verify that 5% of 200 hours is indeed about 10 hours.

We used the multiplication property of equality to solve for x, which states that we can multiply both sides of an equation by the same non-zero number without changing the solution. In this case, we multiplied both sides by 20.