Question

The weight of an object on Earth varies directly with its weight on the moon. The table below shows different weights of objects on Earth,X, compared to their weights on the moon, y. All weights are in pounds.Weight onEarth(X)Weight onMoon(y)1060201202403604060Which equation will calculate the weight, in pounds, of an object on the moon when its weight on Earth is x pounds?

Answer 1

Since we are told that the weight of an object on the moon varies directly with its weight on earth this means that we can express the equation like a linear one, with the form:

y=mx

We can find the value of m with the values from the table by means of this formula:

$m=\frac{y2-y1}{x2-x1}$

For example, Let's us the pairs of x-y values (60,10) and (120,20), like this:

$m=\frac{20-10}{120-60}=\frac{10}{60}=\frac{1}{6}$

Then, the equation is:

$y=\frac{1}{6}x$