Huilan is 11 years older than Thomas. The sum of their ages is 85. What is Thomas’s age?
Let's start by defining some variables to represent the ages of Huilan and Thomas:
Huilan's age: H
Thomas's age: T
The problem gives us two pieces of information:
1. "Huilan is 11 years older than Thomas." We can express this as an equation: H = T + 11.
2. "The sum of their ages is 85." We can express this as another equation: H + T = 85.
We now have two equations with two variables. We can use substitution or elimination to solve for one of the variables. Let's use substitution, since we already have an equation that isolates one of the variables (H).
Substitute H = T + 11 into the second equation:
(T + 11) + T = 85
Simplify:
2T + 11 = 85
Subtract 11 from both sides:
2T = 74
Divide by 2:
T = 37
So Thomas is 37 years old. To check, we can use the first equation to find Huilan's age:
H = T + 11 = 37 + 11 = 48
And indeed, Huilan is 11 years older than Thomas and their ages sum to 85.
Let's solve this step by step.
Let's assume Thomas's age to be T.
According to the problem, Huilan is 11 years older than Thomas. So, Huilan's age will be T + 11.
The sum of their ages is given as 85. So, the equation will be: T + (T + 11) = 85.
Now, let's solve the equation:
2T + 11 = 85
2T = 85 - 11
2T = 74
T = 74/2
T = 37
Therefore, Thomas's age is 37.