Answer:
The son is 24 and the father is 48
Explanation:
If you let x = the age of the child, then the father is 2x old since the father is twice as old as the son. The sum of their ages would be 1x + 2x which simplifies to 3x.
Since the problem gives the total of their ages as 72, we know that 3x = 72.
Dividing both sides by 3, we get x = 24, which we said was the age of the child.
Since the age of the father is 2x, we can say that 2x = 2(24), or 2x = 48 for the age of the father.