Derrick and Maria went to the drive-in theater. They paid an entry fee for the car and individual entry fees for themselves. Their total cost can be modeled by the expression `4.5x+15`. Which of the following answer choices accurately interprets a part of the algebraic expression?

Question

entry fee of the car was 4.50
entry fee of the car was 19.50
each individual entry fee was 15.00
each individual entry fee was 4.50

Answer 1

The expression \( 4.5x + 15 \) represents the total cost, where \( 4.5x \) refers to the individual entry fees for Derrick and Maria, and \( 15 \) refers to the entry fee for the car.

To interpret the components correctly:

• The term \( 4.5x \) indicates that each individual entry fee is \( 4.50 \) (since \( 4.5 \) is the cost of each person's entry), and \( x \) represents the number of people (in this case, Derrick and Maria, so \( x = 2 \)).
• The term \( 15 \) is the fixed entry fee for the car.

Therefore, the accurate interpretation from the provided choices is:

each individual entry fee was 4.50.