Question

How do you solve $- 16x = 32$?

Answer 1

In the above question we need to solve the equation so that we get the value of x. In order to solve the equation, we need to isolate the variable $x$ ,so we first need to get rid of the coefficient 16 and negative sign and shift it to the other side.

Complete step by step solution:
To solve an equation is to find its solutions which are the values which satisfies the equation. A solution is an assignment of values to the unknown variables which we have to find. The above given equation contains a variable and the numbers on either side of the equal to sign. The variable has the power of 1.

Generally, we have four ways of solving the one step equation that is by adding, subtracting,
multiplication and division.

Now, the first step will be to get rid of the coefficient of the variable of $x$,so we need to shift the coefficient to the right-hand side of the equal sign. On moving to Right hand side, the 16 number is divided by 32.
$- x = \dfrac{{32}}{{16}}$

Reducing the above fraction to the lowest term with multiple of 2 we get,
$- x = 2$

Shifting the negative sign on the right-hand side we get,
$x = - 2$

Therefore, we get the value as -2.

Note: An important thing to note is that we can reduce the fraction into its lowest form by calculating the Greatest common factor of both the numbers 32 and 16.The GCF of both numbers is 16 so when we divide numerator and denominator with 16 we get the value 2.