# Simple Elementary Word Problem

I'm trying to help my little sister out but I can't seem to figure it out.

Here is the question:

John fish weight 8 times as much as her parakeet. Together the pet's weight 63 ounces. How much does the fish weight?

The only answer I can think of is 7.875.

• They may be expected to do it by a "guess and check" process. Guess that the parakeet weighs one ounce. Then the fish weighs $8$ ounces, for a total of $9$. That's definitely not $63$! However, $63=9\times 7$, so if we make the parakeet weigh $7$ times as much as our initial guess, everything will be OK. So parakeet $7$, fish therefore $56$. – André Nicolas Sep 28 '14 at 16:38

Let the weight of the parakeet be $x$. Then John's fish is eight times that weight: $8x.$
Then the weight of both of them together is $x+8x=63$.
Simplifying the left side, we get $9x=63\implies x=7$
We can even check that this is right. Since we said that $x=7$, this means the weight of the parakeet is 7 ounces. The fish weighs eight times more, so $8\times 7=56$. Then together, they weigh $7+56=63$ ounces.
So, the fish weighs $8x=8\times 7=56$ ounces.