Question

at 9:00 on a saturday morning, 2 bicyclists heading in opposite directions pass each other on a bicycle path. the bicyclist heading north is riding 5km / hour faster than the bicyclist heading south. at 10:15, they are 41.25 km apart. find the 2 bicyclists' rates. (please show work, i want to understand how you got the answer)

Answer 1

r t = d
Let r be the speed of the bicyclist heading South. Solve the following for r.
(r + 5) 1.25 + r 1.25 = 41.25
r = 14 km/hr, r+5 = 19 km/hr

Answer 2

its okay , at least you tried! better than what i came up with! :P it took me almost 30 minutes just to find the actual answer!

Answer 3

Trying isn't good enough

Answer 4

I realize what went wrong now. They had already given the total distance and total time

Answer 5

I stupidly added them again

Answer 6

relax, we're humans! we all make mistakes (:

Answer 7

Weird thing is, I still keep getting the same thing

Answer 8

Even after correcting the numbers

Answer 9

all i know is that the answer is : the north bicyclist - 19 km & south bicyclist - 14 km. my teacher said the answers. all we have to do is figure out how thats the answer and show the work.

Answer 10

will someone please explain to me my mistake?

Answer 11

There's just no consistency with these

Apparently: \[\frac{41.25}{1.25} = 2x + 5\] is the right setup to get those answers. I just don't get why you're not supposed to divide the rate by 2 to get the average rate.

Answer 12

Lana, any sweet words of advice?

Answer 13

I'm going to find out what the right way to setup the chart is. I don't give up on things until I figure out what the problem is

Answer 14

The only thing I can't figure out is why I'm not supposed to find the average rate by dividing 2x+5 by 2

Answer 15

divide by two, because of how many bicyclist are in the problem.... i think ?

Answer 16

No, division by two is related to finding the average value. But it's not required to use in this case.