Use a number line to mark all possible locations of Beth's and Carl's houses.
-7, -3, 3, and 5
Practice makes perfect
We want to find the possible locations for the house of one of three friends that live on the same street. To do so, we will use a number line. Let's begin by marking Ann's house on the line at 0. Keep in mind that each unit on this number line represents 1 block.
From the exercise, we know that Beth lives 5 blocks from Ann. That means the distance between Ann's house and Beth's house is equal to 5. Notice that Beth's house can be east or west of Ann's. Both options are possible. Let's mark this on our number line.
With the two possible locations of Beth's house marked, we can move on to finding Carl's house. We know that Carl lives 2 blocks away from Beth. We need to consider both possible locations of Beth's house. Let's start with the one represented by -5.
The first two possible locations of Carl's house are -7 and -3. Finally, let's consider the second possible location of Beth's house we previously found. Let's do it!
We found that the possible locations of Carl's house can be represented as -7, -3, 3, and 5 on a number line.
