I really hate these... Jack usually mows his lawn in 5 hours. Jodie can mow the same yard in 3 hours. How much time would it take for them to mow the lawn together? (simplified)

Question

amistre64 · Answer

these are great

anonymous · Answer

lol I can't stand them, they do nothing but confuse me, I never get the answer right.

amistre64 · Answer

tell me, how much of the lawn would you say jack mows in one hour?

anonymous · Answer

I'm going to take a rough guess at 20% of the lawn

amistre64 · Answer

yes; but keeping it a fraction might help out more; lets say 1/5

how much does Jodie do in an hour?

anonymous · Answer

1/3

amistre64 · Answer

good; so they mow for 1 hour, together, how much is done?

1/3 + 1/5

anonymous · Answer

this is where I get lost lol

amistre64 · Answer

i find it simplest to add the denoms for a top number and multiply them for a bottom:

8/15 , then reduce if need be

amistre64 · Answer

so here we sit; we have 15 parts to get done, and 8 parts are done each hour; if we flip this over we get the actual time it takes to complete

amistre64 · Answer

15/8 hours

anonymous · Answer

ok

amistre64 · Answer

you might want to convert it iinto hours minutes and seconds; but i dont know the format your answer accepts

anonymous · Answer

hours,minutes,seconds

amistre64 · Answer

1 hour and 7/8 of another then: 60/8 = 7.5 minutes = 1/8th of an hour, times 7 of them = 52.5 minutes

amistre64 · Answer

1 hour, 52 minutes, and 30 seconds