The Mitchell family is renting a boat for the day. The boat rental has a flat fee of $100 plus $20 for each hour. They have to pay for a whole hour even if they are not out on the lake for a whole hour. For example, if they rent the boat for 3 and one-half hours, they have to pay for 4 hours.

If they want to spend $250 or less on the boat rental for the day, how many hours can they rent the boat? Formulate an inequality and solve.

1 answer

Let's call the number of hours they rent the boat "h". The total cost of renting the boat for "h" hours can be expressed as:

Total cost = flat fee + (hourly rate x number of hours)
Total cost = $100 + ($20 x h)

To find the maximum number of hours they can rent the boat for $250 or less, we need to set up an inequality. We know that the total cost must be less than or equal to $250:

$100 + ($20 x h) ≤ $250

Now we can solve for "h" by isolating it on one side of the inequality:

$20 x h ≤ $150
h ≤ $150 ÷ $20
h ≤ 7.5

We can't rent the boat for a fraction of an hour, so we should round down to the nearest whole number. Therefore, the Mitchell family can rent the boat for a maximum of 7 hours if they want to spend $250 or less.