SOLUTION: One Plane traveling 400 mph goes 1,250 miles with the wind in the same amount of time that another plane going 450 mph goes 1,000 miles against the wind. How fast is the wind blowi

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Question 630014: One Plane traveling 400 mph goes 1,250 miles with the wind in the same amount of time that another plane going 450 mph goes 1,000 miles against the wind. How fast is the wind blowing?
Answer by 55305(86) (Show Source):
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Lets pretend that the speed of the wind is x. So the speed of the plane that is going 400 mph is 400+x. And the speed of the plane going 450 mph is 450-x. The formula for travel and distance problems is distance= speed*time, which is the same thing as time= distance/speed. So the time the plane with the wind took was and the time that the plane against the wind took was and since they are the same, we should set them equal to form an equation.

So if we multiply both sides by the LCD(least common denominator),, we get

So if we subtract 400000 and add 1250x to each side, we get

Now if we divide by 2250, we get

So the speed of the wind is 72.22 mph.