SOLUTION: A postal worker can sort a day's worth of mail in 8 hours. With her supervisor helping, it takes 3 hours. How long would it take the supervisor working alone?

Question 1088683: A postal worker can sort a day's worth of mail in 8 hours. With her supervisor helping, it takes 3 hours. How long would it take the supervisor working alone?
Answer by ikleyn(52786) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
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A postal worker can sort a day's worth of mail in 8 hours. With her supervisor helping, it takes 3 hours.
How long would it take the supervisor working alone?
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Since the worker and the supervisor can complete the work i n 3 hours, their combined rate of work is  of the work per hour.


The worker's individual rate of work is  of the work per hour.


Hence, the supervisor's rate of work is the difference  =  =  of the work per hour.


It means that the supervisor can complete the work in  hours, which is equal to  =  hours = 4 hours and 48 minutes.

Answer. the supervisor can complete the work in 4 hours and 48 minutes, if he will work alone.

Solved.

It is a typical joint work problem.

There is a wide variety of similar solved joint-work problems with detailed explanations in this site. See the lessons
    - Using Fractions to solve word problems on joint work
    - Solving more complicated word problems on joint work
    - Selected joint-work word problems from the archive

Read them and get be trained in solving joint-work problems.

Also, you have this free of charge online textbook in ALGEBRA-I in this site
    - ALGEBRA-I - YOUR ONLINE TEXTBOOK.

The referred lessons are the part of this textbook under the topic
"Rate of work and joint work problems" of the section "Word problems".

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