A contractor is adding a back porch on to a house. The porch needs to hold 20 people and furniture that weighs 250 lb. The contractor calculates that the porch needs to hold 3750 lb to meet that specification. What value did the contractor use for the weight of a person?(3 points)

Question

Responses

150
150

175
175

200
200

250

Answer 1

To find the value the contractor used for the weight of a person, we can set up an equation based on the information given.

Let \( x \) be the weight of one person. Since the porch is to hold 20 people, the total weight from the people would be \( 20x \).

The total weight that the porch needs to hold is from 20 people plus the weight of the furniture:

\[ 20x + 250 = 3750 \]

Now, we can solve for \( x \):

1. Subtract the weight of the furniture from the total: \[ 20x = 3750 - 250 \] \[ 20x = 3500 \]

2. Now, divide by 20 to find \( x \): \[ x = \frac{3500}{20} \] \[ x = 175 \]

The contractor used a weight of 175 lb for each person. Therefore, the correct response is:

175