Question

Jessica is organizing a guided tour of the rain forest. The average profit per person that the touring company makes is given by the rational expression 18x+35/x, where x is the number of people going on the tour.
Rewrite the expression as a sum of two fractions, and simplify?


What does the quotient 35/x represent?

Answer 1

As a practical equation, this one doesn't make much sense -- why would the profit per person have a term proportional to the number of people?  Let's just go with it.

$18x + \dfrac{35}{x}$

$= \dfrac{18x^2}{x} + \dfrac{35}{x}$

$= \dfrac{18x^2 + 35}{x}$

That's the answer to the first part.

35/x represents a portion of the profit that's 35/x per person, or a constant $35 per tour.