An office worker

Question

An office worker can fold and stuff 14 envelopes per minute. IF  another office worker can do 10 per minute, how long will it take them working together to fold and stuff 1560 envelopes?

Answer 1

Love rate problems! This is a combined rate problem where no adjustment is needed. One office worker can fold 14/1min. And the other office worker can fold 10/1min. No equivalent fractions are needed, we can just combine the rates. 

 

14/1 + 10/1 = 24 envelopes per minute.

 

We would just need to find out how much time it will take them to fold 1560 envelopes by dividing how many envelopes both can do per minute into how many envelopes that need folding.

 

1560/24 = 65minutes or 1 hour and 5 minutes.