While on vacation, you rent a scooter. You pay $7.50 for each hour you use it. It costs $3 to rent a helmet. Write an algebraic expression that describes the total cost in terms of hours, x, that you rent the scooter

Answer 1

To form an algebraic expression for the total cost of renting the scooter, we need to consider both the hourly cost of the scooter and the fixed cost for the helmet.

1. The cost of renting the scooter is $7.50 for each hour, so for \( x \) hours, the cost for the scooter is \( 7.50x \).
2. The cost to rent the helmet is a fixed amount of $3.

Now we can combine these two costs to write the total cost \( C \) as an expression:

\[ C = 7.50x + 3 \]

This expression \( C = 7.50x + 3 \) represents the total cost in terms of the number of hours \( x \) that you rent the scooter.