SOLUTION: Tom travels 60 miles per hour going to a neighboring city and 50 miles per hour coming back using the same road. He drove a total of 5 hours away and back. What is the distance fro

Question 520269: Tom travels 60 miles per hour going to a neighboring city and 50 miles per hour coming back using the same road. He drove a total of 5 hours away and back. What is the distance from Tom's house to the city he visited?
Answer by Alan3354(69443) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Tom travels 60 miles per hour going to a neighboring city and 50 miles per hour coming back using the same road. He drove a total of 5 hours away and back. What is the distance from Tom's house to the city he visited?
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The avg speed of the round trip is
2*60*50/(60 + 50) = 6000/110 mi/hr
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This is similar to parallel resistors or parallel flows, but x2
Note that the avg speed is not 55 because more time is spent going 50 mi/hr.
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= 600/11 mi/hr
d = r*t = 5*(600/11) miles round-trip
d = 1500/11 miles one-way
d =~ 136.4 miles

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