SOLUTION: In 2008, Ryan Newman won the Daytona 500 (mile) race with a speed of 152.672 mph. Find his time to the nearest thousandth. I tried doing speed*time=distance; but I didn't get

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Question 258264: In 2008, Ryan Newman won the Daytona 500 (mile) race with a speed of 152.672 mph. Find his time to the nearest thousandth.

I tried doing speed*time=distance; but I didn't get the right answer. The answer in the textbook is 3.275 hr. I'm unsure how to do the problem.
I did:
152.672*t=500 and then to get t on one side subtracted 152.672 from both sides. The answer I got was 347.328. Where did I go wrong? Please help. This is for my college class Intermediate Algebra.
Answer by Theo(13342) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
rate * time = distance.

distance is 500 miles.
rate is 152.672 miles per hour.

substitute in this equation to get:

152.672 * time = 500

divide both sides of this equation by 152.672 to get:

time = 500/152.672 = 3.27499476 hours.

answer should be 3.275 to the nearest thousandth of an hour.

here's where you went wrong:

your statement:

152.672*t=500 and then to get t on one side subtracted 152.672 from both sides. The answer I got was 347.328. Where did I go wrong? Please help. This is for my college class Intermediate Algebra.

152.672*t = 500 is correct.

you should have divided both sides of the equation by 152.672 rather than subtracted 152.672 from both sides of the equation to get 152.672 from one side of the equation to the other.