Question

Martina is currently 14 years older than her cousin Joey. In 5 years she will be 3 times as old as Joey. Use this information to answer the following questions.
If you let x represent Joey’s current age, what expression can you use to represent Martina’s current age?

Based on your answer to part a, what expression represents Joey’s age in 5 years? What expression represents Martina’s age in 5 years?

What equation can you write based on the information given?

What is Joey’s current age? What is Martina’s current age?

Answer 1

1. Martina is given to be 14 years older than Joey who is x years old. Hence, the age of Martina can be expressed as, x + 14
 2. If Joey's current age is x then in 5 years he will become x+5 years old.
 3. Martina's age will be her current age added with 5 making it, x+14+5 or x + 19.
4. The equation that would best represent the given scenario in this item is: x + 19 = 3(x + 5)
 5. From the given above, the value of x is equal to 2. This is Joey's current age.
 6. The current age of Martina is x + 14 which is equal to 16.