What is the definition of an equation?
An equation is basically a statement that equates two expressions.
An equation must contain an "equality" sign.
Example:
[tex]4+2=12-6[/tex]
Multi-step equation:
A multi-step equation is an equation that requires more than one operation to solve.
Example:
[tex]4x-2=2x+6[/tex]
To solve the above equation, the following steps are required.
Step 1: subtract 2x from both sides of the equation
[tex]\begin{gathered} 4x-2x-2=2x-2x+6 \\ 2x-2=6 \end{gathered}[/tex]
Step 2: add 2 to both sides of the equation
[tex]\begin{gathered} 2x-2+2=6+2 \\ 2x=8 \end{gathered}[/tex]
Step 3: divide both equations by 2
[tex]\begin{gathered} \frac{2x}{2}=\frac{8}{2} \\ x=4 \end{gathered}[/tex]
As you can see, we carried out multiple steps to solve the above equation.
Therefore, such an equation is called a multi-step equation.
