Cara likes candles. She also likes mathematics and was thinking about using Algebra to answer a question that she had about two of her candles. Her taller candle is 16 centimeters tall. Each hour it burns makes the candle lose 2.5 centimeters in height. Her short candle is 12 centimeters tall and loses 1.5 centimeters in height for each hour that it burns. Cara started filling out the following table to help determine whether these two candles would ever reach the same height at the same time if allowed to burn the same length of time. Finish the table for Cara.

Use the data in the table to determine what time the two candles will be the same height.

Time (hours)

16 cm candle height (cm) 12 cm candle height (cm)
0 16 12
1 13.5 10.5
2
3
4
5
6
7
When the time is
in hours, both candles will be
cm in height.