Carl earned $240 this week. This was $20 less than one-half the amount he earned last week Which equation, when solved for x, gives the amount Carl earned last week?
Let's start by using algebra to translate the given information into an equation.
First, we know that Carl earned $240 this week. Let's call his earnings last week "x", just to make it easier to work with.
Next, we know that this week's earnings were $20 less than one-half of last week's earnings. In other words, we can write:
240 = 1/2 x - 20
To solve for x, we first want to isolate it on one side of the equation. Let's add 20 to both sides:
240 + 20 = 1/2 x
Now we can simplify:
260 = 1/2 x
To get x by itself, we need to undo the multiplication by 1/2. We can do this by multiplying both sides of the equation by 2:
520 = x
So Carl earned $520 last week.
To check our work, we can substitute this value into the equation we started with:
240 = 1/2 (520) - 20
240 = 260 - 20
240 = 240
This confirms that our answer is correct.