A window cleaner has enough supplies to clean 21 windows per office building on a certain number of buildings. They can also clean the windows of a school with 42 windows. Altogether, there are enough supplies to clean 126 windows. How many office buildings can be washed? Identify the equation that would be used to solve this problem algebraically.

Question

A window cleaner has enough supplies to clean 21 windows per office building on a certain number of buildings. They can also clean the windows of a school with 42 windows. Altogether, there are enough supplies to clean 126 windows. How many office buildings can be washed? Identify the equation that would be used to solve this problem algebraically.

Answer 1

Let the number of office buildings be x.

Since each office building has 21 windows, the total number of windows in the office buildings is 21x.
The number of windows in the school is 42.
Therefore, the total number of windows cleaned is 21x + 42 = 126.
Subtracting 42 from both sides of the equation, we get 21x = 84.
Dividing both sides of the equation by 21, we get x = 4.
Therefore, there are 4 office buildings that can be washed.
The equation that would be used to solve this problem algebraically is 21x + 42 = 126.

Answer 2

To solve this problem algebraically, we need to represent the unknown value, which is the number of office buildings, with a variable. Let's call it "x".

From the given information, we know that a window cleaner can clean 21 windows per office building and that the total number of windows in the school is 42.

So, the number of windows cleaned in the office buildings would be 21x (21 windows per office building multiplied by the number of buildings).

The total number of windows that can be cleaned is given as 126, which includes the windows in the school. Therefore, the equation can be written as:

21x + 42 = 126

To find the value of "x", we can solve this equation.

First, we can subtract 42 from both sides of the equation to isolate the term with "x":

21x = 126 - 42

Simplifying:

21x = 84

Finally, divide both sides of the equation by 21:

x = 4

Therefore, the window cleaner can wash 4 office buildings.

Answer 3

Let's call the number of office buildings as "x".

For each office building, the window cleaner can clean 21 windows. So, for x office buildings, the total number of windows cleaned would be 21x.

In addition, the window cleaner can also clean the windows of a school with 42 windows.

So, the total number of windows cleaned would be 21x + 42.

The problem states that there are enough supplies to clean 126 windows in total.

Therefore, we can set up the equation:

21x + 42 = 126

Now we can solve this equation algebraically to find the value of x.