Tom,Jerry and Ali share 279 marbles. Tom has 4 times as many marbles as Jerry and Ali has 36 more marbles than Tom.

(a)How many marbles does Jerry have?
(b)How many more marbles does Tom have than Jerry?

Tom is 4U

Jerry is 1U
Ali is 4U+36

279-36=243
243/9=27

27*4=108 (tom)
108-27=81

Answer:a) 27
b) 81

Kayla, in your solution you defined variables but then never used them

Jerry's marbles --- x
Tom's marbles ---- 4x
Ali's marbles ---- 4x + 36

their sum is 279

x + 4x + 4x+36 = 279
9x = 243
x = 27

Jerry has 27 marbles
Tom has 108 marbles
Ali has 144 marbles

Tom has 81 more marbles than Jerry

To solve this problem, we'll need to set up a system of equations. Let's assign variables to the unknowns:

Let the number of marbles Jerry has be J.
Then, the number of marbles Tom has is 4J (Tom has 4 times as many as Jerry).
And the number of marbles Ali has is 4J + 36 (Ali has 36 more than Tom).

We know that the total number of marbles they have is 279.
So, we can write the equation:
J + 4J + (4J + 36) = 279

Now, let's solve this equation to find the values of J, Tom's marbles, and Ali's marbles.

Combining like terms, we have:
9J + 36 = 279

Subtracting 36 from both sides:
9J = 243

Dividing both sides by 9:
J = 27

(a) Jerry has 27 marbles.
(b) To find the number of marbles Tom has, we substitute the value of J back into the expression 4J:
Tom has 4J = 4 * 27 = 108 marbles.

To find how many more marbles Tom has than Jerry, we subtract the number of marbles Jerry has from the number of marbles Tom has:
108 - 27 = 81

(b) Tom has 81 more marbles than Jerry.