SOLUTION: Can you please help me with this story problem. Two cars start from the same place and travel in the same direction. If one car travels at 60 miles per hour and the other trave

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Question 268137: Can you please help me with this story problem.
Two cars start from the same place and travel in the same direction. If one car travels at 60 miles per hour and the other travels at 45 miles per hour in how many hours will they be 60 miles apart?
Thank you for your help.
Answer by solver91311(24713) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!


Remember, distance equals rate times time.

Let represent the distance traveled by the slower car at mph for some amount of time, .

Then is the distance traveled by the faster car at mph for the same amount of time,

The trip taken by the slower car can be described as:



And the trip taken by the faster car can be described as:



which can be arranged thus:



Now we have two expressions for which we can set equal to each other:



Solve for for the answer to your problem.

Super Double Plus Extra Credit: What was the distance traveled by each of the cars in the amount of time you computed above? Do the distances differ by 60 miles?

John