The measure of an angle is 3X the measure of its supplement.

MathIQ

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Mar 1, 2009
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The measure of an angle is three tiems teh measure of its supplement. Find the measure of the angle.
(Draw the picture, write an equation, and solve.)
I know supplement means 180 degrees so,

I'm guessing it's going to be ___ +___ =__180degres___
Or what formula do I use to figure out this equation?
Also how do I use three times the measure of it's supplement do I use 60 degrees?
 
The first step is to choose a symbol to represent the unknown angle's measure.

Let x = the measure of the unknown angle

Now you tell me, what is the expression (using the symbol x) for the supplement of this unknown angle?

We'll go from there...
 
I asked you to give me an expression; you typed an equation, instead.

Two angles are supplementary if their sum is 180.

If I give you 100 degrees as one of these angles, then the supplementary angle is 180 - 100.

If I give you 23 degrees as one of these angles, then the supplementary angle is 180 - 23.

If I give you x degrees as one of these angles, then the supplementary angle is what EXPRESSION ?
 
Re: The measure of an angle

The Supplementary angle is 180-x.
 
So, you hopefully now understand that one possible pair of expressions for the two supplementary angles in this exercise are the following:

x

180 - x

In fact, these two expressions could be used in almost any basic word problem dealing with a pair of arbitrary supplementary angles, where you're free to choose the symbol x to represent one of those two unknown angles.

Now, if I were to tell you that one of the two angles above is equal to three times the other, then that would be a statement about a relationship between the expression x and the expression 180 - x.

Well, guess what? I don't need to tell you this because the exercise already told you and you typed it as the very first sentence in this thread: "The measure of an angle is three tiems teh measure of its supplement."

What would you ask me now, in order to write an equation that models this relationship in your exercise?

 
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