<p>A man took 8 hrs to climb and return from a mountain. Assuming that he climbing one third times as fast as going down, how many hours did he take to reach the top of the mountain?
2, 3, 4, 5, or 6</p>
<p>A contractor estimates that he can paint a house in 6 days by using 4 workers. If he actually uses onkly 3 people for the job, how many days will it take to paint the house?
4, 5, 7, 8, or 9. I got 4.5 .. none one of the choices =X</p>
<p>How many minutes will a car take to cover a distance of one mile if its average speed is 45 mph?</p>
<p>I'm so bad at these word problems. I get stucky easily -_- Help would be much appreciated!</p>
<ol>
<li><ol>
<li> Use proportions. If he goes up the mountain one-third as fast, that means it takes him three times as long. So, if x equals the time to go down, 3x would equal the time to go up, and x+3x=8, 4x=8, x=2, so 3x=6.<br></li>
</ol></li>
<li><ol>
<li>Four workers paint 1/6 of the house in a day. Each worker paints 1/6/4=1/24 houses in a day. So, three workers paint 3/24=1/8 houses in a day, so three workers take 8 days to paint one house.<br></li>
</ol></li>
<li><p>4/3. distance traveled=velocity*time. you know this because distance traveled is in miles, velocity is miles/hours, and time is hours, so the hours cancel out to get miles=miles (which is what you want). So, 1 mile = (45 miles/hour) * x hours. x hours=(1 mile) / (45 miles per hour)=1/45 hours. Then, to find minutes (y), you set up a proportion. 1/45=y/60. y=60/45=4/3 minutes.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>the first and last step to solving word problems is to check if the answers make sense.</p>
<p>for the first question, it obviously took more time going up the mountain (according to the question), so it has to be either 5 or 6 (more than half of the total time) - </p>
<p>for the second question, 4.5 cant be the answer because theres 1 less worker, so it had to have taken more time, namely, 7, 8 or 9 hours (more than 6 days).</p>
<p>i have another suggestion to solving #2 [and other similar problems]
like crazybandit said it should take more time for less workers to finish the job
so in other words, the number of workers is inversely proportional to number of days
and now just set up the typical inverse relationship equation [xy=k ]
so we have D<em>W = k
6</em>4=24
and now its one of those “if x and y are inversely proportional and x=6 when y=4, then what does x equal to if y=3?”
D*3=24
D=8.</p>
<p>another suggestion for similar questions such as if they included number of houses
i.e. it takes 6 days for 4 workers to finish painting 5 houses. how long will it take 3 workers to finish painting 8 houses?"
basically, here its the same inverse relationship with time and workers. but what about houses? well, the more houses there are, the more time we need, and if we have more houses we need more workers. thus the relationship is direct here.</p>
<p>so just a basic equation for all those house problems and stuff would be:</p>
<p>houses/(people*days) = k</p>
<p>units could vary, but the concept sorta remains the same. [it could be something like people cooking cakes in matter of hours: cakes/(people*hours) = k, and etc]</p>
<p>sorry for this long long explanation ><em><
but i hope it helps you in the future ^</em>^</p>