McGraw Hill Glencoe Algebra 1, 2012
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McGraw Hill Glencoe Algebra 1, 2012 View details
6. Adding and Subtracting Rational Expressions
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Exercise 49 Page 717

Practice makes perfect
a We are given that Grace's walking speed to her friend's house is w and her jogging speed back to her home is 2.5w. The distance between the houses is 2 miles. We will write an expression to represent the total time that she spends going to and coming from her friend's house. To do so, let's first remember the formula for the time.
Time =Distance/Speed

Now we will identify the amount of time in terms of the corresponding speeds and distance.

Distance Speed Time=Distance/Speed
2 w 2/w
2 2.5w 2/2.5w
Now that we have the corresponding times, we can add them up to express the amount of time that she spends going to and coming from her friend's house. Let's do it and then simplify with a common denominator!
2/w+2/2.5w
5/2.5w+2/2.5w
7/2.5w
b We will calculate the minutes that Grace spends going to and coming from her friend's house if she walks about 3.5 miles per hour. To do so let's plug w= 3.5 into the expression that we found in Part A.
7/2.5w
7/2.5 * ( 3.5)
7/8.75
0.8
Since we have found the time that she spends in hours, now we need to convert it to minutes using a conversion factor. 60 Minutes/1 Hour Let's multiply 0.8 hour by this conversion factor.
0.8 Hour * 60 Minutes/1 Hour
0.8 Hour * 60 Minutes/1 Hour
0.8 Hour * 60 Minutes/1 Hour
0.8 * 60 Minutes/1
48 Minutes
We found that she needs 48 minutes to go to and come from her friend's house if she walks about 3.5 miles per hour.