System of equation

Question

A plane can travel 960 miles in 2 hours with a tail wind. The return trip takes 2 hours and 40 minutes against the wind (use a mixed number or improper fraction to represent this time - NO DECIMALS!). Find the speed of the plane in still air and the wind speed. Write a system of two equations to represent the problem

Answer 1

OK, let set the speed of the plane as p and speed of the wind as w. 

 

What do we have here? p+w is a speed for a plane to go to the destination point.

 

p-w is a speed for the return trip. And we know that return trip takes 2 hours and 40 minutes. Let's transfer the time into a proper fraction. 2 hours 40 minutes is 2 2/3 hours.

 

So the distance is 2*(p+w)=960

 

From the traveling back we learn that 2 2/3*(p-w)=960

 

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