A farmer can plow 2/3 of a hectare in 1hr. At this rate,in how many hours will 5 farmers plow in the same field?

Question

math word problem

Answer 1

"At this rate, in how many hours will 5 farmers plow in the same field?" is a poorly phrased question.

 

The question should be "how long will it take five farmers to plow the entire field, assuming that all of them work simultaneously at the same rate and there's no inefficiency due to their all being there at once."

 

Five farmers working at a rate 2/3 of the whole job would have a net rate of 5(2/3) = 10/3 of the whole job per hour.  So let's have them work for t hours; (10/3)t = 1.  The solution is t = 3/10 hour, or 18 minutes total.