How do you simplify #6y + 14= - 7- y#?

1 Answer

#y=-3#

Explanation:

We have:

#6y+14=-7-y#

Two things here - first off, so long as we do the same operation to both sides of the equation, we can do whatever we want mathematically and the two sides will still be equal.

The second thing is that we want to get the #y# on one side of the equation and everything else on the other side.

Let's do this!

We can add #y# to both sides (that will move the #y# term on the right side to go away and move to the left side) and we can also subtract 14 on both sides (which will move the 14 from the left side to the right side. It'll look like this:

#6y+y+14-14=-7-14-y+y#

and it simplifies to:

#7y=-21#

We're almost there. Now we just need to divide both sides by 7:

#(7y)/7=-21/7#

#y=-3#

And now let's show that after all that, the solution works:

#6y+14=-7-y#

#6(-3)+14=-7-(-3)#

#-18+14=-7+3#

#-4=-4#