[Closed] Algebra help!!

step 2 is wrong, the s should be under the other side. "divide both sies by s"

I think it's a formatting error. Divide both sides by 2s, you get a on the left, and (v2-u2)/2s on the other.

Have you got formatting issues here? Should be,

2a = v2-u2
     -----
       s

(divide both sides by 's')

a = v2-u2
    -----
     2s

(divide both sides by '2')

You could skip a step by dividing both sides by '2s'.

ok, thats the way the paper explained the steps and the final answer as shown?? 😀

That looks wrong to me.

I was about to type a big thing about how it works but it looks like you've just got your formatting wrong. If you put a load of spaces in front of the ----- and the things underneath it so it's on the right hand side, it works.

The principle is that you do the same thing to both sides. So to get rid of the 2 you divide both sides by two. 2/2 is just 1 so it disappears from the left, so you add a /2 on the right. You're not 'moving' it around as such.

EDIT: what Cougar said - and you can remove all the 2 from the right hand side because they are in every term on the top and bottom.

Yep should be

a=v2-U2
---------
2s

Note, the 2s ought to be, under he v2-u2

I assume it looks better on paper than up there ?

2as = v2-u2

so a = (v2-u2) divided by 2 and divided by S

= (v2-u2)
----------
2s

yep got no idea what is going on with my formatting. 😀

Got it now. I spent at least a goos hour this afternoon staring at this and for the life of me i could not get it.

Thanks all 🙂

Stand by for more if my head gets pickled again. 😀

You'll probably lose marks if you don't do what I said and make it v-u all over s.

Are the definitely 2s and not squared? As in the equation v^2 = u^2+2as

the equation is 2as = Vsquared - Usquared.

Ah. The syntax you want in PC parlance there then is (v^2 - u^2)

Cheers cougar, and thanks for all the help. I was actually making it more complicated than it had to be hence the bafflement 😀

[i](v^2 - u^2) [/i]

or (v + u)(v - u) 😉

2as = v^2-u^2

Now i can get it to the very last step but i do not know why the 2 that is in front of the a goes down to the s. I understand the formula steps and why they happen by removing the s by division, but the 2. i just dont get it.

It helps if you don't think about moving the terms/number, but about adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing both sides of the equation by the same value.

You divide both sides by 2s:

(2as)/2s = (v^2-u^2)/2s

On the left, the pair of 2s cancel, to give the solution for a:

a = (v^2-u^2)/2s

(a equals v-squared minus u-squared all over 2s)

Anyway, my 16 year old son could not help which is actually quite worrying

If your son's not doing the higher level GCSE maths paper, he'll probably not have done much/any algebra.

Mike i think i was confusing myself. you have hit the nail on the head there. I should just divide by 2s on both sides, i did it by dividing both sides by s first then 2 so by the time i got to that step i was convinving myself it was overly complicated. I have done it a few times now and have it completely in the bag 😀

Crikey this is the easy stuff 😀

man i wish i never clicked on this thread (before 😀 after clicking on thread 😕 😮 after reading down the first couple of posts 😕 😮 😯 😛 😐 😕 😳 😆 😡 😆 😯
sorry 😮 😯 😛 😯 😳

Still more interesting than arguing over whether to turn bike over to mend puncture, thanks mac, made my night 😆