Question

x - 12 = 0.5 (x - 4)

Answer 1

The equation to solve is:

$x-12=0.5(x-4​)$

We can use the distributive property on the right hand side to simplify.

The distributive property is:

$a(b-c)=ab-ac$

Using the property, we have:

$\begin{gathered} x-12=0.5(x-4) \\ x-12=0.5(x)-0.5(4) \\ x-12=0.5x-2 \end{gathered}$

Now, we can simply do some algebra and solve for x. The steps are shown below:

$\begin{gathered} x-12=0.5x-2 \\ x-0.5x=-2+12 \\ 0.5x=10 \\ x=\frac{10}{0.5} \\ x=20 \end{gathered}$

The answer is:

x = 20