Niel has a bucket of beads. He uses them to make 8/b identical necklaces and then buys 25 beads at the store. He ends up with a total of 500 beads. How many did he start with? Identify the operations needed to solve this problem using the equation

Answer 1

Let x be the number of beads that Niel started with.
After making necklaces, he has x - (8/b) * b = x - 8 beads left.
After buying more beads, he has x - 8 + 25 = x + 17 beads.
Since he has a total of 500 beads, we can set up the equation x + 17 = 500.
To solve for x, we subtract 17 from both sides of the equation: x = 500 - 17
Therefore, Niel started with x = 483 beads.