SOLUTION: Lisa and Ted agree to meet at the construction site located 100 miles from Norwood on the 300 mile highway connecting Norwood to Huntsville. Lisa leaves Huntsville at noon while Te

Algebra.Com
Question 180469: Lisa and Ted agree to meet at the construction site located 100 miles from Norwood on the 300 mile highway connecting Norwood to Huntsville. Lisa leaves Huntsville at noon while Ted departs from Norwood one hour later. If they arrive at the construction site simotaniously and Lisa's driving speed averaged 10mph faster than Ted's, than how fast did she drive?
Answer by Mathtut(3670)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Lisa and Ted agree to meet at the construction site located 100 miles from Norwood on the 300 mile highway connecting Norwood to Huntsville. Lisa leaves Huntsville at noon while Ted departs from Norwood one hour later. If they arrive at the construction site simotaniously and Lisa's driving speed averaged 10mph faster than Ted's, than how fast did she drive?
:
lets call the Ted's rate r ,his time is t, and his distance is 100
..............Lisa's rate is r+10, her time is t+1, and her distance is 200
:
Ted: 100=rt............eq 1
Lisa:200=(r+10)(t+1)...eq 2
:
take eq 1 and rewrite to t=100/r and plug that value into eq 2
:
200=(r+10)((100/r)+1)
:
200=(r+10)((100+r)/r)...used r as the common denominator of term and combined
:
the numerators
:
200r==(r+10)((100+r)......multiplied both sides by r to eliminate the fraction
:

:
}set up as a quadratic equation
:
r=77 and 13 rounded
:
Lisa is r+10 so she drove either 23 mph or 87 mph
:
13 and 23 doesnt seem reasonable on a highway so you could throw that out
on that basis.
:
Solved by pluggable solver: SOLVE quadratic equation (work shown, graph etc)
Quadratic equation (in our case ) has the following solutons:



For these solutions to exist, the discriminant should not be a negative number.

First, we need to compute the discriminant : .

Discriminant d=4100 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .




Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 77.0156211871642, 12.9843788128358. Here's your graph:

RELATED QUESTIONS

Lisa, an architect from Huntsville, has arranged a business luncheon with her client,... (answered by ankor@dixie-net.com)
Andy lives in Houston and is 350 miles away from Sidh, who lives in New Orleans. They... (answered by macston,ikleyn)
John and Mike have been friends since school but havent seen eachother in many years, so... (answered by ptaylor)
Alex and Bert agreed to meet on the highway connecting their hometowns, which are 120 km... (answered by JulietG)
Alex and Bert Agreed to meet on the highway connecting their hometowns, which are 120 km... (answered by Theo,MathTherapy,Alan3354)
John and Mike have been friends since school but haven't seen each other in many years,... (answered by ptaylor)
John and Mike have been friends since school but haven't seen each other in many years,... (answered by ankor@dixie-net.com)
A highway in a large Western state is straight as an arrow and runs in an east-west... (answered by Nate)
The airport closest to Norwood is 36 miles away from the city center. On a map with a... (answered by ikleyn)