The president of a company traveled 1900 mi by jet and 300 mi on a prop plane. The rate of the jet was three times the rate of the prop plane. The entire trip t

Question

The president of a company traveled 1900 mi by jet and 300 mi on a prop plane. The rate of the jet was three times the rate of the prop plane. The entire trip took 5 h. Find the rate of the jet.

Answer 1

This is a distance-rate-time problem. Distance = rate • time which means time = distance/rate. Our unknown in this problem is the rate so we'll make that x

 

300/x will give us the time it took to travel 300 miles in the plane

1900/3x will give us the time it took to travel by Jet

The problem states that when we add these two together, we will get time.

 

(300/x) + (1900/3x) = 5

Multiply both sides of the equation by 3x to get rid of the division to get

900 + 1900 = 15x

Solve for x

x = 2800/15 = 560/3 = 186.6666 mph

This is the rate he was traveling at on the prop plane. We know the jet was traveling 3 times as fast so multiply it by 3 to get 560 mph which is how fast he wast traveling on the jet.