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

200
200

175
175

250

Answer 1

To find the value the contractor used for the weight of a person, we can set up the problem as follows:

Let \( x \) be the weight of one person. Since the porch needs to hold 20 people, the total weight of the people alone would be \( 20x \). The porch also needs to hold an additional 250 lb for furniture.

The total weight the porch needs to support is given by:

\[ 20x + 250 = 3750 \]

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

1. Subtract 250 from both sides:

\[ 20x = 3750 - 250 \]

\[ 20x = 3500 \]

2. Divide both sides by 20:

\[ x = \frac{3500}{20} \]

\[ x = 175 \]

Therefore, the contractor used a weight of 175 lb for each person.