Janae distributed a bag of bird seed equally among 4 bird feeders in her backyard. When she finished, each bird feeder contained 6 ounces of bird seed. You can use the equation x over four equals six to represent this problem. Explain what x represents. How would you solve for x? Explain why.

Question

anonymous · Answer

If you think about this, you take your original amount of bird seed and divided it among 4 bird feeders which ended up being 6 ounces per container.

You can write this as a sentence: "The amount of bird seed I have divided equally among 4 bird feeders is equal to 6 ounces per bird feeder".

Let a variable, x, represent the amount of bird seed you started with.

If you write this in "math" this is $$\frac{x}{4} = 6$$

You would solve for x by multiplying both sides of the equation by 4.  This is just doing the reverse of the division.