Algebra: Solving the Unknown
Demystify variables, equations, and graphs by treating math as a tool for solving everyday puzzles. Learn to balance equations intuitively, map changing rates, and find exact break-even points without memorizing endless formulas.
Like Duolingo, but for Algebra: Solving the Unknown. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Finding the Missing Number and Mapping Change and Comparing Options. It starts from scratch.
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Key ideas in Algebra: Solving the Unknown
- In an equation, a variable stands for a specific missing value rather than an arbitrary label
- Finding the value that makes both sides equal solves the puzzle
- An equation functions like a balance scale where both sides have identical total value
- Performing an operation on only one side tilts the scale and breaks the equality
- Isolating a variable means unwrapping it by reversing operations in the opposite order of how they were applied
- Additions and subtractions outside the variable term are cleared before undoing multiplication or division attached directly to the variable
- Subtracting a negative quantity is equivalent to adding a positive quantity
- Recognizing that double negatives invert subtraction into addition simplifies the equation before balancing
- Plugging a candidate number back into the original equation replaces the variable
- If calculating both sides results in identical numbers, the solution is guaranteed to be correct
- Like terms must have identical variable letters raised to the exact same powers
- Coefficients tell you how many of that specific unit you have and can be added or subtracted directly
- Terms with different variables or different powers of the same variable represent different quantities and cannot merge
- The outside factor multiplies every individual term inside the parentheses separately
- Multiplying a negative factor by a negative term produces a positive result (-3 times -5 is +15)
- The distribution applies to constant terms inside parentheses just as it does to variable terms
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Algebra: Solving the Unknown the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
A mystery box plus two 1-pound weights balances an 8-pound weight on a scale: b + 2 = 8. What is the letter b?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where Algebra: Solving the Unknown takes you
- 1
Finding the Missing Number
- Balancing the Scale to Isolate Unknowns
- Simplifying Expressions and Setting Boundaries
- 2
Mapping Change and Comparing Options
- Reading Lines as Stories of Change
- Pinpointing Where Two Conditions Cross
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
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- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
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You pick the voice
Algebra: Solving the Unknown is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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