SOLUTION: what equation must i use in order to solve a problem of when two objects will meet when departing from the same point? ~For example~ "If two runners depart from the same point w

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Question 724890: what equation must i use in order to solve a problem of when two objects will meet when departing from the same point?
~For example~
"If two runners depart from the same point with a time difference of 20 minutes. If the first runner is going 6km/h and the second 8km/h; in how much time will one reach the other?"

Answer by josgarithmetic(39614) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Several of these have been solved in the system. Here is an attempt to generalize just a bit.

Assuming runner A has a 20 minute head start, and assuming R%3Er:
_____________rate______________time______________distance
runnerA______r_________________%281%2F3%29%2Bt___________6%281%2F3%2Bt%29
runnerB______R__________________t________________8t

You want to know for what t will runnerA and runnerB reach the same distance on the same path.

distance for runnerA equal to distance for runnerB,
highlight%28r%281%2F3%2Bt%29=Rt%29. The 1/3 is for our given 20 minutes, which is 1/3 of an hour. Your example used kilometer, and hours, and kilometers per hour.

SOME IMPORTANT ADVICE ABOUT THIS IS NECESSARY. You need to learn how to analyze problems to determine what facts are important and to work with those facts to build numeric relationships and then to arrange the numbers and expressions into meaningful symbolic statements and solve the problems. When we find a problem example such as you presented, we do NOT automatically know to use, highlight%28r%281%2F3%2Bt%29=Rt%29. We must analyze and use fundamental knowledge and properties.