Rachel needs to write 3 book reports with b pages and 3 science reports with s pages during the school year. How do you write an algebraic expression for the total number of pages Rachel will need to write?

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Answer 1 · 2017-11-30T21:09:18

#3b + 3s#

We have #3# books each with #b# amount of pages. We can write this as #b + b + b# or #3b# as we have #3# lots of #b# pages.

Now looking at the number of science reports, we have 3 lots of s pages, so it is #3s#.

Working out the total number of pages we add the number of book reports and the number of science reports, so we end up with #3b + 3s#

Hope this helps!