Warming up to age

Before getting into some serious algebra word problems, here are a few warm-ups to get you in the mood. 

The Problem A 40-year-old man married a 25-year-old woman. The woman died at the age of 40, and her husband was so saddened that he wept for years after that. He died 5 years after he stopped weeping, on his 80th birthday. How many years was he a widower  

just do some mental calculations. The couple was married when he was 40 and she was 25 he was 15 years older than she was. If she died when she was 40, then he was still 15 years older than she was, so he was 55. It doesn t matter how many years he wept and that for 5 years he had stopped weeping. The only figuring you need to do is to take the age when he died, 80, and subtract the age he was when his wife died, 55. Subtracting 80 - 55 = 25, so he was a widower for 25 years. 

The next problem involves more counting and logic than algebra to figure out the ages. 

The Problem A man has three children. The oldest child is three times as old as the youngest. The second child is six years older than the youngest and six years younger than the oldest. How old are the children  

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