Q:

Nagaraj has a​ party-length sandwich that is 55 inches long and is to be cut into three pieces. The middle piece will be 4 inches longer than the shortest​ piece, and the shortest piece will be 9 inches shorter than the longest piece. How long will the pieces​ be?

Accepted Solution

A:
Answer:S = 14 inchesM = 18 inchesL = 23 inchesStep-by-step explanation:Let's being by defining our variables:Shortest piece = SMiddle piece = MLongest piece = LSo now we need to write down what formulas we're given:"Nagaraj has a​ party-length sandwich that is 55 inches long and is to be cut into three pieces"so we can start by knowing the S + M + L = 55 "The middle piece will be 4 inches longer than the shortest​ piece"This means that M - 4 = S"the shortest piece will be 9 inches shorter than the longest piece"Finally, this means that S + 9 = LWhat we need to do now is turn all of these things into the form of one letter. We can see that S is in all three of these equations, so lets solve everything in terms of S.M = S + 4L = S + 9Now we can plug in both of those things into our first equation to get:S + S + 4 + S + 9 = 55and now we solve :)3S = 42S = 14So now given this we can use this to solve the other three lengthsM = 14 + 4 = 18L = 14 + 9 = 23