All High School Math Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #14 : How To Do Word Problems Where One Quantity Is Unknown
The length of a rectangle is ten more than the width. The perimeter is . What is the area of the rectangle?
For a rectangle:
and
Let width and
length.
Thus , so the width is
and the length is
.
Then the area becomes .
Example Question #15 : How To Do Word Problems Where One Quantity Is Unknown
Let . If gasoline sells for
per gallon, approximately how much would
cost?
Use the factor-label nethod to solve this problem:
or approximately
.
Example Question #16 : How To Do Word Problems Where One Quantity Is Unknown
Two brothers are dividing up the family farm to make work easier. Frank and George divide acres in a ratio of
. How many acres will George work?
Use proportions to solve this problem:
Let acres worked by Frank and
acres worked by George.
Cross-multiply to get or
so
.
So Frank works and George works
.
Example Question #17 : How To Do Word Problems Where One Quantity Is Unknown
According to Newton's laws of Motion, force equals mass times acceleration, or . If a
mass exerts a force of
, what force would a
mass exert at he same acceleration?
This problem is solved using proportions.
Cross multiply to get and then divide by
to get
Example Question #122 : High School Math
Barbara lives miles from the beach, and her friend Josef lives
miles from the beach. If Barbara and Joe leave their homes at the same time, and Barbara drives
miles per hour, how fast will Joe need to drive to arrive at the beach at the exact same time as Barbara?
miles per hour
miles per hour
miles per hour
miles per hour
miles per hour
miles per hour
To find the speed (or rate) that Josef will need to travel, we can use the equation (
).
This equation cannot be used for Josef yet, since only the distance traveled is known and not the time in which he will need to make the trip.
To find the time it takes Barbara to make the trip, use the same equation to solve for , where the distance is the length of Barbara's trip. Note that we express
miles per hour as a fraction that represents the ratio of
miles to
hour.
Multiply both sides of the equation by the reciprocal of the rate. Note that the unit of "miles" cancels out, leaving only the unit "hours" (time). The result will be expressed as a fraction of a single hour.
The amount of time it takes Barbara to get to the beach must be the same amount of time it takes Joseph to get to the beach.
Therefore, we can use this new value of and the
equation to find the rate Josef will need to travel for his
mile trip.
Multiply both sides by the reciprocal of time (a fraction) to isolate the rate.
Example Question #123 : High School Math
What number is of
?
Verbal cues include "IS" means equals and "OF" means multiplication:
Example Question #1 : How To Do Word Problems Where Two Quantities Are Unknown
A farmer has units of fence. If he uses this to build a square fence, what will be the area enclosed by the fence?
Since we are looking at a square, the formula for the area of a square is .
Therefore we need to know the length of each side.
Since this is a square fence, then each of the four sides will be equal.
The amount of fence that the farmer has in the problem will become the perimeter of our square.
Since when working with a square, for this problem
.
Plug that into our original equation.
Example Question #2 : How To Do Word Problems Where Two Quantities Are Unknown
Rosie, Eileen and Sasha order a pizza. It is divided into slices. Eileen eats
slice. Roseanne eats twice as many slices as Sasha.
If there are slices of pizza remaining, how many slices did Sasha eat?
slices
slices
slices
slice
slices
slices
Since the pizza began as slices and there are now
slices remaining, a total of
slices were eaten (because
). Of the
eaten pieces, it is stated that
slice was eaten by Eileen. This means a total of
slices were eaten by Roseanne and Sasha combined. To find exactly how many slices Sasha ate, use the fact that Roseanne ate twice as many slices as Sasha. Write and solve for
in the following equation, where
is the number of slices Sasha ate. Note that
stands for the number of slices Roseanne ate, since she ate twice as many slices as Sasha.
slices
Example Question #1 : How To Do Word Problems Where Two Quantities Are Unknown
A helicopter flies against the wind from city A to city B in 5 hours. The same helicopter returns from city B to city A, in the same direction as the wind, in 4 hours. Find the ratio of the speed of the helicopter to the speed of the wind.
11
9
8
10
7
9
First, let = speed of the helicopter,
= speed of the wind, and
= distance between city A and city B. Next, find the ratio of
to
. Traveling against the wind:
. Traveling with the wind:
. Finally, set the equations equal to one another:
.
Simplify the equation: .
Example Question #4 : How To Do Word Problems Where Two Quantities Are Unknown
Michael has red shirts and
blue shirts, such that the ratio is
red shirts for every
blue shirts. What is the minimum number of shirts he can have?
There is insufficient information to answer the question.
It really doesn't matter what and
are. What matters is the ratio given to us,
red:
blue. Let's assume that he can only have whole shirts. That means that the minimum number of red shirts he can have is
, and the minimum number of blue is
, giving us a total of
.
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