Question

solve using the multiplication principle
8x=40

Answer 1

do 40 divided by 8

Answer 2

since the x is multiplied by a number, you do the operation (+, _, *, /) that "undoes" multiplication, which is division, so that x ends up alone on that side of the = sign.

Answer 3

the multiplicative identity is 1.
if you have a number x, you multiply it by its reciprocal to get 1.
so if you multiply 8 by 1/8, you will get 1.
since you are multiplying by 1/8 on one side of the equation, you must do it on the other side of the equation as well
so you have 8x times 1/8 = 40 times 1/8