Joe rents a skateboard from Kelli's shop and his friend, Ming, rents a skateboard from David's shop. Is it possible for Joe and Ming to rent the skateboards for the same number of hours, and pay the same price? Write an equation and solve it to justify your answer.

Let's represent the rental price per hour for Kelli's skateboard as \( k \) and for David's skateboard as \( d \). If Joe rents his skateboard for \( h \) hours, his total cost can be expressed as \( k \cdot h \). Similarly, for Ming, the total cost would be \( d \cdot h \). To find out if they can pay the same price, we set the equations equal to each other: \[ k \cdot h = d \cdot h \] From this equation, we can factor out \( h \) (assuming \( h \neq 0 \)), giving us: \[ k = d \] So, Joe and Ming can rent the skateboards for the same number of hours and pay the same price only if the hourly rates \( k \) and \( d \) are equal. If they are different, then they cannot possibly pay the same total cost despite renting for the same duration.