8 tenths minus 5 hundredths

For a read-a-thon, jay and odhràn each started reading a book at the same time and continued reading for several hours. jay's book had 278 pages, and he read 55 pages per hour. odhràn's book had 238 pages, and he read 45 pages per hour. after how many hours did they have the same number of pages left, and how many pages were left?

The decibel level of sound is 50 db greater on a busy street than in a quiet room where the intensity of sound is watt/m2. the level of sound in the quiet room is db, and the intensity of sound in the busy street is watt/m2. use the formula , where is the sound level in decibels, i is the intensity of sound, and is the smallest sound intensity that can be heard by the human ear (roughly equal to watts/m2).

How can writing phrases as algebraic expressions you solve problems?