Let's represent the numbers of hours the bike is rented by [tex] h [/tex]. This means that the amount of money paid to rent a bike for [tex] h [/tex] hours is [tex] 17 + 9h [/tex].
We can figure out how many hours Tom rented the bike by creating an equation based off the expression we just found. Since we can say that that expression is how much a person would pay to rent the bike for [tex] h [/tex] hours, we can formulate an equation:
[tex] 17 + 9h = 53 [/tex]
[tex] 9h = 36 [/tex]
[tex] h = 4 [/tex]
Tom rode the bike for 4 hours.
