Together, two pipes can fill a tank in 3 hours. One pipe alone can fill the tank in 5 hours.
How long does it take for the other pipe to
fill the tank alone?

Answerthe simplified expression isexplanationthe given expression is,let us deal with the bracket first.the two negatives in the parenthesis will become positive.the expression now becomes,we now expand the parenthesis to get,we group like terms to obtain,this simplifies to,

So the first thing we do is to multiply the top equation by 3. the reason i want to do this is i notice there will be a 6y on both equations and can possibly add/subtract them. so we get 6y = -3x + 27. adding that and the second equation we get 6x = 27-15 which is 12. divide by 6 and we get 2. ∴ x = 2. substituting 2 into the first equation we get 2y = -2 + 9 which is 7. divide by 2 and we get 7/2. ∴ y = 7/2, x = 2.