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What do you call the act of moving a variable or constant to the other side of the equal sign?

For example:

3x = y

x = y/3

How do you call the act of moving a constant or a variable to the other side of the equal sign?

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    There's no one particular term for this as far as I know. In your example, I'd say "divide both sides by three." You might say "to solve for x" as well. Finally, there's an error in your second equation: it should be "x = y/3".
    – Canadian Yankee
    Oct 28, 2020 at 23:52
  • and if you meant "3=y/x," it's called a violation of the rule, should x be zero.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Oct 29, 2020 at 3:14

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General terms are "rearrange" or "manipulate" an equation, or "algebraic manipulation". This is done by performing valid operations on both sides of the equation such that it remains a true statement.
If the purpose of the manipulation is to make one side of the equation into a single variable, that is called "isolating" the variable.

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