Question

The total weight w, in pounds, of a tractor-trailer capable of carrying 8 cars depends on the number of cars c on the trailer. This situation is represented by the function rule. Make a table using appropriate values of c, graph the function rule, and then state whether the graph is continuous or discrete with a reason for your choice

Answer 1

Answer:

See attached image for table and graph

The graph is discontinuous

Step-by-step explanation:

We assume the average weight of a truck for vehicle transport to be around 8000 pounds, and use for simplicity the average weight of a small to middle size car to be around 3000 pounds.

With such info, we built a table that shows in the column of the variable for the horizontal axis, the number of cars added to the truck, and on the column of the quantity to be plotted on the vertical axis, the total weight of the loaded truck.

The graph is discontinuous because each car unit loaded makes it jump a fixed number of pounds (about 3000 with our suggested value). It shows horizontal segments that keep escalating as we add more cars (to a maximum of 8 total added.

Also we mark clearly (with either an empty circle or a solid circle) what the weight is at the points of discontinuity, since if we want it to be a graph that represents a function, there should be only one value associated with each point of the domain.