SOLUTION: It takes Fred 8 hours to prepare the stadium field for a football game. He earns $10/hour. It takes Sam 12 hours to do the same job and he gets paid $7/hour. a. How long would it

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Question 859663: It takes Fred 8 hours to prepare the stadium field for a football game. He earns $10/hour. It takes Sam 12 hours to do the same job and he gets paid $7/hour.
a. How long would it take to prepare the stadium if Fred and Sam worked together?
b. What is the “cheapest” way to prepare the field: to hire Fred? to hire Sam? to have them both work together?
Answer by josgarithmetic(39618) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
To quickly get to combined work rate, 1%2F8%2B1%2F12=5%2F24 jobs per hour.

Looking at jobs per dollar,
Fred: 1%2F%288%2A10%29=1%2F80 jobs per dollar
Sam: 1%2F%2812%2A7%29=1%2F84 jobs per dollar.

BEST COST FOR THE JOB:
To be very simple about finding an answer, not necessarily the perfect best, both of Fred and Sam together work 24 hours for 5 jobs, so 24%2A10%2B24%2A7=608 dollars; but that is for FIVE jobs. For ONE job, 608%2F5=highlight%2813.60%29 dollars. That is much better than 80 dollars for Fred alone or 84 dollars for Sam alone.