Multiply by the denominator to eliminate the fractions.
b=-4
Practice makes perfect
We can eliminate fractions in an equation by multiplying the entire equation by the denominator. In this equation, our denominator is 13. Let's try to solve for b.
Since the left-hand side and right-hand side are equal, we know our solution is correct.
Extra
Solving Multi-Step Equations
When solving multi-step equations it is important to know what are we doing and why we are doing it. First, we will recall some important facts about multi-step equations. Let's look at an example.
6(x-3)=5x-2x+6
We can see that the equation above needs more than one step to solve, it is a multi-step equation. Our goal is to solve the equation for the variable, in our case x. To do this, we need to divide our task into smaller steps that we can solve using inverse operations and the Properties of Equality. Let's try it for our example!
Here we simplified the left-hand side of the equation and then moved to right-hand side. It is important to take a moment before solving the equation and think what properties you can use to do it.
