SOLUTION: During the first part of a trip a canoeist travels 60 miles at a certain speed. The canoeist travels 9 miles on the second part of the trip at a speed of 5mph slower. The total tim

Question 442398: During the first part of a trip a canoeist travels 60 miles at a certain speed. The canoeist travels 9 miles on the second part of the trip at a speed of 5mph slower. The total time for the trip is 4hrs. What was the speed on each part of the trip?

Answer by jorel1380(3719) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
60/x+9/x-5=4
60x-300+9x=4x2-20x
0=4x2-89x+300

Solved by pluggable solver: SOLVE quadratic equation with variable

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=3121 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .

Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 18.1082388617317, 4.14176113826829. Here's your graph:

Throwing out the 4.1 answer, we get the speed of the canoe to be 18.108 going and 13.108 on the second part of the trip.
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