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| Question 327079:  During the first part of a trip, a canoeist travels 76 miles at a certain spot speed. The canoeist travels 20 miles on the second part of the trip at a speed of 5 mph slower. The total time of the trip is 4 hours. What was the speed on each part of the trip?
 Answer by galactus(183)
      (Show Source): 
You can put this solution on YOUR website! There are various ways to set this up. Use d=rt.
 The first part of the trip is 76 miles, so we have rt=76.
 Since the entire trip took 4 hours, the second part took 4-t hours.
 The second part was 5 mph slower, so we have (r-5)(4-t)=20
 From the first part, we have t=76/r.
 Sub into the second one:
 (r-5)(4-(76/r))=20
 Solving this we have r=25.24 and 3.76
 3.76 is extraneous, so we go with 25.24 mph as the rate on the first part and 20.24 on the second part.
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