Weekly Challenge, Nov. 30

[donnalack]

Hello, Speedpreppers!

Here's your challenge for this week. I'll give you a hint Wednesday!
Remember, post your answer and your method for solving the problem, because we're all trying to learn to reason the way we need to for the SAT.


At cross-country practice, Tyler ran up a hill at 3 mph. He took the same path on the way back down at an average speed of 6 mph. It took him an hour to complete the run. How long did it take him to get up the hill?

Happy reasoning!

Donna
Pit Crew

[madmike]

i'm waiting for the hint this time.

[donnalack]

Because Mad Mike is waiting for it, the hint comes early this week!

D = R x T (Distance equals rate times time. Rate is the same as speed.)

Distance up the hill = Distance down the hill

You've got rates, distance is the same, now work on how you're going to express time to set up an equation.

This, by the way, is a very common SAT problem.

[donnalack]

You know the distance up the hill is the same as the distance down the hill, you know the rates going up and down, and you know the total time that the run took. Let’s begin to set up a formula:

You know that the total time is one hour. So:

It took Tyler 23 of an hour to get up the hill. That will probably not be one of your answer choices, since we don’t customarily give time in fractions of an hour. Convert it to minutes:

[kill]

Nice test, I've seen several tests like that, and some where there is one guy going up the hill and another going down the hill, thanks for sharing the resolution.

[leighdu]

Argh, I joined too late to try and solve this one, but I am ready for the next one. These are the ones I always have problems with too.