Jordan is a manager of a car dealership. He has 3 professional car washers to clean the entire lot of cars, Jennifer, Arianna, and Matthew. Jennifer can wash all the cars in 14 hours. Arianna can wash all the cars in 11 hours. Matthew is new to the car dealership, so no one knows how long it will take him.

Jordan assigns all of them to wash the cars together. Explain to Jordan how this task can tell him how long it would take Matthew to complete the task if he worked by himself. Use complete sentences.

Question

Jordan is a manager of a car dealership. He has 3 professional car washers to clean the entire lot of cars, Jennifer, Arianna, and Matthew. Jennifer can wash all the cars in 14 hours. Arianna can wash all the cars in 11 hours. Matthew is new to the car dealership, so no one knows how long it will take him.

Jordan assigns all of them to wash the cars together. Explain to Jordan how this task can tell him how long it would take Matthew to complete the task if he worked by himself. Use complete sentences.

anonymous · Answer

Have each cleaner wash 1/3 of the total amount of cars. In order to find how long Matt would take to clean, multiply the amount of time taken to clean 1/3 of the cars by three. The result should be close to the total amount of time that would be taken if he did indeed clean all the cars.