Question

carol spends 17 hours in a 2 week period practicing her culinary skills . how many hours does she practice in 5 weeks

Answer 1

42.5 hours in 5 weeks

Answer 2

If Carol spends 17 hours in 2 weeks practicing. You need to know how many hours she spends in 1 week. That'll be:
2 weeks = 17 hours
1 week = ? 
When you cross multiply: we see that in one week, Carol spends 8.5 hours practicing.
1 week = 8.5 hours
Therefore in 5 weeks she spends 8.5 x 5 = 42.5 hours