During the first part of a trip, a canoeist travels 18 miles at a certain speed. the canoeist travels 4 miles on the second part of the trip at a speed 5 mph slower. the total time for the trip is 3 hrs. what was the speed on each part of the trip?
Accepted Solution
A:
We can set it up like this, where s is the speed of the canoeist:
[tex] \frac{18}{s} + \frac{4}{s-5} = 3[/tex]
To make a common denominator between the fractions, we can multiply the whole equation by s(s-5):
Technically, either of these solutions would work when plugged into the original equation, but I would use the second solution because it's a little "neater." We have the speed for the first part of the trip (9 mph); now we just need to subtract 5mph to get the speed for the second part of the trip.
[tex]9-5 = 4[/tex]
The canoeist's speed on the first part of the trip was 9mph, and their speed on the second part was 4mph.