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#1 2007-07-11 01:19:33

ppinkins
Member
Registered: 2007-07-11
Posts: 2

Need a formula!!! or help solving

Sample question:

An employee drove from Lake Charles to a conference in Port Arthur.  A total distance from the round trip was 240 miles.  The time required to travel one way to Port Arthur was two hours.  Due to heavy traffic during the return trip to Lake Charles, an extra hour was required.  How much slower was the employee traveling on the return trip?

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#2 2007-07-11 01:35:41

Maelwys
Member
Registered: 2007-02-02
Posts: 161

Re: Need a formula!!! or help solving

ppinkins wrote:

Sample question:

An employee drove from Lake Charles to a conference in Port Arthur.  A total distance from the round trip was 240 miles.  The time required to travel one way to Port Arthur was two hours.  Due to heavy traffic during the return trip to Lake Charles, an extra hour was required.  How much slower was the employee traveling on the return trip?

Start with figuring the length of each leg. Traffic doesn't change the distance, so if the round trip was 240 miles, he travelled half of that in each direction.

Then find out how fast he was travelling on the way there. Speed is simply distance divided by duration. So if you know how far he travelled to get there, and the question tells you how long it took him, you can calculate that.

To find out how fast he was travelling on the way back is much the same. You just have to do one extra calculation to determine how long it took him to get back (since the question gives you the difference in duration, but not the total new duration). Once you have the new duration, you can calculate the speed returning the same way as above.

Now, just compare the two speeds, and you'll know how much slower he travelled coming home!

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