SOLUTION: Hello, Here is the question I need to solve to begin with An earthquake emits primary waves moving at 8.0 Km/s and seconday waves moving at 5.0 km/s. How far from the epi-center

Question 11610: Hello, Here is the question I need to solve to begin with
An earthquake emits primary waves moving at 8.0 Km/s and seconday waves moving at 5.0 km/s. How far from the epi-center of the earthquake is the seismic station if the two waves arrive at the station 2.0 min apart.
What I could figure out (I think)
I was converting time to seconds
2 min = 60x2=120 min
and converting km/s to ft/s
8.0km/s x 1000 m =8000m
8000m x 3.281 = 26248 ft/s
5.0km/s x 1000 m = 5000 m
5000m x 3.281 ft = 16405 ft/s
I was also trying calculations with d=rt where d= distance r= stands for rate of speed and t= time.
Thank you so much to any help or direction you can point me in!

Answer by Earlsdon(6294) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
First, I don't see any need to convert Km to feet. Ok to convert 2 minutes to 120 seconds.
For the primary wave:

For the secondary wave:

But, d1 = d2, so:
Simplify and solve for t1.
Subtract 5t1 from both sides.
Divide both sides by 75.
seconds. Substitute this into and solve for d1.

Km.
Check:

Km.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Earthquakes produce several types of shock waves. The most well known are the P-waves (P... (answered by mananth,ikleyn)

Seismographs can record two types of wave energy (P waves and S waves) that travel... (answered by rothauserc,ikleyn)

Seismographs can record two types of wave energy (P waves and S waves) that travel... (answered by ikleyn)

I hate word problems. I have a tough time trying to comprehend them and extract a... (answered by checkley71)

The earthquake with a magnitude 8 releases a million times more energy than an earthquake (answered by Theo)

Hello I need to learn formulas for distance word problems in algebra one. Here is an... (answered by Alan3354,josgarithmetic,ikleyn)

This has me confused..... Using Richter scale equation M = log I/I^(0) where M is the (answered by stanbon)

The primary wave of an earthquake travels 1.7 times faster than the secondary wave.... (answered by ikleyn)

Ellipsoids (three-dimensional ellipses) are used in health care to avoid surgery in the... (answered by stanbon)