One situation that can solve this linear equation is as follows:
A plumber earned $15 for fixing a broken part in a bathroom. He said that he needed $3 to check what the problem was before fixing the broken part and that he earned $5 per hour.
Therefore, we can state: how many hours did the plumber work to fix the broken part in the bathroom?
We can solve the equation by finding the value of p as follows:

We can subtract 3 from both sides of the equation, and then divide by 5 to find the value of p as follows:

Then, the plumber worked 2.4 hours to fix the broken part in the bathroom.
In summary, we translated a problem to a linear equation, and then solve for the unknown variable, p, to solve for the number of hours the plumber worked.