Question

Farmer John needs to build a fence to surround his goat pen. The perimeter of the pen is 55 feet. The fencing he plans to buy is sold in 3-foot and 8-foot sections. You can write an equation in standard form to model this situation.

Answer 1

let's say x = # of 3-foot pieces
if he has (x) of those 3-foot pieces, the pieces will be 3x length in total
repeat with the 8-foot pieces (pick another variable y to represent the # of 8-foot pieces)

then add the two quantities together