Expert: Sherry Wallin - 3/25/2010

Question
There is a central office located between two work sites with two teams. The distance between the two work sites is 300 miles. If team 1 leaves for work site A at 8 a.m at a rate of 60 mph, and team 2 leaves for work site B at 9 a.m at a rate of 70 mph, what time do both teams get to their work sites at the same time

Answer
Hi Dee~
    Building a table to organize the information is sometimes helpful:

team#     d      r     t
__________________________
#1       300    60     x
__________________________
#2       300    70    x-1
__________________________

Let x = amount of time team #1 travels and then x-1 is the time that team #2 travels.Keep in mind that d = rt. So for team#1 300 = 60x and for team#2 300 = 70(x-1). Since the distances are they same their representations are equal 60x = 70(x-1)->
60x = 70x - 70
70 = 10x
x = 7
So team #1 travels for 7 hours and left at 8 am so they arrived at 3pm. You can check team #2 left at 9am and traveled for 7-1 = 6 hours and arrived at 3pm.