Question

Change the fraction w-3/w+5 into an equivalent fraction with the denominator w2 + w – 20.

Answer 1

ANSWER

$\frac{ {w}^{2} - 7w + 12}{ {w}^{2} + w - 20 }$

EXPLANATION


The given fraction is,

$\frac{w - 3}{w + 5}$

To get an equivalent fraction, we multiply both the numerator and the denominator by the same quantity that will give us

w²+w-20

in the denominator.


This implies that,

$\frac{w - 3}{w + 5} = \frac{(w - 3)(w - 4)}{(w + 5)(w - 4)}$

We multiply out the numerators and denominators using the distributive property to obtain,


$\frac{w - 3}{w + 5} = \frac{ {w}^{2} - 4w - 3w + 12}{ {w}^{2} - 4w + 5w - 20 }$

This simplifies to

$\frac{w - 3}{w + 5} = \frac{ {w}^{2} - 7w + 12}{ {w}^{2} + w - 20 }$