If you have a word problem where you need to combine things and you're having trouble setting it up, I was always taught to make a table. This is essentially a combined work problem in reverse since you are given the combined work at the beginning and expected to find the individual work. You are given Daniel's individual work (40 bushels in 9 hours), but not Paul's. So how do you solve for just Paul's (work)speed (or time really since you are given one component of this), given the speed of both of them together and Daniel's individual speed/rate? That's essentially what the question is asking. The most important, and imo trickiest part of a word problem is to understand what information is being asked for, aka what information your variable is. In this case it is the time Paul takes to pick 40 bushels of apples by himself. This is your x! Setting up the table, we have Paul, Daniel, and the two together as our columns or rows, and the number of bushels & hours each takes as the other. We're given times, except Paul's, and we know that it will be 40 bushels in each case. If you understand that the rate will be bushels/hour, it becomes easy from there to set up the problem: 40/x + 40/9 = 40/4.95 The unknown rate of Paul plus the rate of Daniel is the rate of the two combined. Solve for x and you should get roughly 11 hours.
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Attention video editors: It's time for another round of our Top 5 Seasonal Spotlights! Read below to see what we have in store for our winter edition -- Word on the street is that the Queen of Hearts will be visiting us soon; could it be that she'll have some extra goodies in store for Top 5 competitors? Hmmm.... If you're new to Seasonals or need a refresher, here's how they work! It's simple: While during the summer we run the Top 5 as we have in the past, we take a break with periodic themed contests the rest of the year. Each season has its own competition with a corresponding theme for the editors to work with! It's easy to participate! The contest works as follows: Editors have two weeks from the time of this posting to make and submit a video that matches the given theme. Post in this thread when you've completed your video (Unlike summer's Top 5, embedding on our Portal is not an automatic submission due to the specific nature of the contest -- simply posting a link in the thread is fine!) We will take a week following that to judge the submissions. The results will be posted the same way as the usual Top 5 on our homepage! As always, you can earn a Pin for placing. We're looking forward to seeing your videos! If you have any questions, please contact a member of staff or post here. For this competition, normal Top 5 content & footage rules apply. Our theme for winter this year is: Valentine's Day! As an added bonus, regardless of placing PARTICIPANTS IN THIS CONTEST WILL ALSO RECEIVE AN EXTRA PRIZE DURING THIS YEAR'S ANNUAL WONDERLAND EVENT, which is right around the corner! You have until Sunday, March 1st to turn in your entries. Please post them in this thread! (& Make sure to check out the home page on Sunday, March 8th when we reveal the winners!)
