Carl earned $240 this week. This was $20 less than one-half the amount he earned last week Which equation, when solved for x, gives the amount Carl earned last week?

Answer 1

Let's start by using algebra to translate the given information into an equation.

First, we know that Carl earned $240 this week. Let's call his earnings last week "x", just to make it easier to work with.

Next, we know that this week's earnings were $20 less than one-half of last week's earnings. In other words, we can write:

240 = 1/2 x - 20

To solve for x, we first want to isolate it on one side of the equation. Let's add 20 to both sides:

240 + 20 = 1/2 x

Now we can simplify:

260 = 1/2 x

To get x by itself, we need to undo the multiplication by 1/2. We can do this by multiplying both sides of the equation by 2:

520 = x

So Carl earned $520 last week.

To check our work, we can substitute this value into the equation we started with:

240 = 1/2 (520) - 20

240 = 260 - 20

240 = 240

This confirms that our answer is correct.