Question

PHONE CALLS A long-distance telephone company charges a standard monthly service fee of $19.95 plus $0.05 per minute of long-distance use. Write a polynomial to express the monthly cost of the phone plan if x minutes of long-distance time are used per month. What is the degree of the polynomial?

Answer 1

The problem involves two components of the monthly cost for the telephone company's service.

The first component is a standard monthly service charge. Irrespective of your usage, the company charges $19.95 each month.

The second component of the cost is dependent on the amount of long-distance usage. The company charges $0.05 per minute. If you used 'x' minutes of long distance time, then the cost would be $0.05 multiplied by 'x', which equals 0.05x.

To get the total monthly cost, we add up these two components, the fixed fee of $19.95 and the variable part 0.05x.

So, the polynomial representing the monthly cost is:
Cost = 19.95 + 0.05x

A polynomial's degree is the highest power of its variable. In our polynomial, there is only one term with variable 'x' (i.e., 0.05x), and the power of 'x' in this term is 1. Therefore, the degree of this polynomial is 1.