How do you solve a simultaneous equation?

Take 2 equations say equation 1: 2y+4x=26 and equation 2: y+3x= 18. What we need to do is make either the two x values or the 2 y values be equal so that we can subtract one of the equations from the other. for example: In this case we would multiply the 2nd equation by 2, so that we get 2y in both equations. This gives us equation 1: 2y+4x=26 and the adjusted equation 2: 2y+6x=36. What we do now is subtract equation 2 from equation one which gives us -2x=-10, we then make them both positive and divide 10 by 2 to obtain x which gives us x=5. We then plug x=5 into equation 1 or 2 to find the value of y. In this case 2y+4*5=26 results in y= 3. Finally we can check that we have the right values for x and y by substituting both values of x and y that we found into the equation 2 and checking we get the right result.

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Answered by Bryony S. Maths tutor

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