I have covered simple manipulation of equations before, but I am going to do so again as I plough through the GCSE paper. If you have x/5=14 then you can find x fairly easily. The first comment is that if you do something to one side of an equation then to keep it equal you have to do the same thing to the other side. I want x on its own. If I multiply x/5 by 5 I end up with x. I have to do the same thing to the other side of the equation so 14 x 5 = 70. This means x=70.
I hope that you followed the first paragraph as it gets a little more difficult now. Take the equation 2(3y-1) =13. The brackets mean that everything inside the brackets is multiplied by 2. It also means that if you divide both sides of the equation by 2 you get 3y-1 = 6.5. What is the next stage? Well you want an equation with y on its own but let's start with 3y and add 1 to both sides. This gives us 3y =7.5 The next step is to divide both sides by 3 and you get y = 2.5
The main point is to do the same things to both sides of the equals sign and try to leave the unknown factor on its own. Then you know the answer.
That sums it up
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