A 17-foot piece of string is cut into two pieces so that the longer piece is 5 feet longer than twice the shorter piece. Find the lengths of both pieces. Who is the length of the shorter piece?

Question

11474 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2016-10-26T14:46:34

13 and 4

In order to find out the lengths of these two pieces of string, we must set up an algebraic equation.

Let's set the smaller length equal to #x#.

We know that the bigger length is equal to #5# plus twice the smaller length, #x#, so we can write this length as #2x+5#.

We also know that both of these lengths add up to 17, so we can now set up an equation:

#17 = x + 2x+5#

#12=3x#

#x=4#