Wednesday 22 April 2009

More manipulation of equations

Here are some more examples of manipulating equations. The actual numbers don't matter but do get used to moving the numbers around.

This time the equation is 16 - z all divided by 4 = 7. The principles are the same as per the last blog. Do the same thing to both sides so that you are left with the thing that you want to know, in this case z. Firstly get rid of that 4. You do this by multiplying both sides by 4. This gives you 16 -z = 7 x 4 = 28. Now you don't want a minus z so how about adding z to both sides. This gets rid of the z from the left side but gives you a z on the right. 16 =28 + z.

I always like to see the thing you are looking for on the left. I think it looks neater. It's like saying a = 7 or b = 32. Now try saying it the other way round. It just doesn't sound right. With the equals sign it doesn't matter which you say first because they are equal. So back to our equation. 28 + z =16. The final step is to get z on its own. Take 28 from both sides and you get z = 16 - 28. So the answer is z = -14.

That sums it up

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