Question

An electrician cuts a 15 ft piece of wire into two pieces. One piece is 11 ft longer than the other. How long are the pieces?

Answer 1

Answer: 13 feet and 2 feet

Step-by-step explanation:

In this instance, we can represent the shorter piece as x. Because the other piece is 11 feet longer than the shorter piece, we must therefore represent it as (x+11).

Now we can set up the equation:

x+(x+11) = 15

Remove the parentheses and combine like terms:

2x+11=15

Subtract eleven from both sides:

2x=4

Divide by 2:

x=2

We can now determine that the shorter piece is two feet long. But we have not solved for the longer piece. In order to do so, we need to plug the "2" into (x+11).

(2+11) = 13

Therefore, the shorter piece is 2 feet and the longer piece is 13 feet.