Theorem 20.0.1 · Distance, Speed and Time
Equivalently,
Keep the units matched: miles per hour goes with time in hours. Convert minutes first.
Distance equals speed times time, and almost everything else follows: average speed (it is not the average of the speeds!), meeting and catching up, and walking on escalators and moving walkways.
In this section you will be able to use distance = speed × time, find an average speed the right way, and spot the average-speed trap.
You hike 4 miles out at 4 mph and come back the same way at 2 mph. Your average speed is not 3 mph. Why not?
Every problem in this chapter rests on one formula: distance = speed × time. Know two of the three and you get the third.
Average speed is total distance divided by total time. Look: on the way back you are slow, so you spend longer at the slow speed. That drags the average below the plain mean of the speeds.
Equivalently,
Keep the units matched: miles per hour goes with time in hours. Convert minutes first.
A common mistake is to assume that average speed is the average of all the speeds (especially when the distance you travel at each of those speeds is the same). Remember: that's not true unless you travel at those speeds for the same amount of time!
Going out at and back at over the same road, you spend twice as long at . So the average is pulled toward : it is , not . For two equal distances the average speed is the harmonic mean .
Henry decides one morning to do a workout, and he walks of the way from his home to his gym. The gym is kilometers away from Henry's home. At that point, he changes his mind and walks of the way from where he is back toward home. When he reaches that point, he changes his mind again and walks of the distance from there back toward the gym. If Henry keeps changing his mind when he has walked of the distance toward either the gym or home from the point where he last changed his mind, he will get very close to walking back and forth between a point kilometers from home and a point kilometers from home. What is ?
Put home at and the gym at . Where does Henry first turn around?
A cart rolls down a hill, traveling inches the first second and accelerating so that during each successive -second time interval, it travels inches more than during the previous -second interval. The cart takes seconds to reach the bottom of the hill. How far, in inches, does it travel?
Sam drove miles in minutes. His average speed during the first minutes was mph (miles per hour), and his average speed during the second minutes was mph. What was his average speed, in mph, during the last minutes?
Samia set off on her bicycle to visit her friend, traveling at an average speed of kilometers per hour. When she had gone half the distance to her friend's house, a tire went flat, and she walked the rest of the way at kilometers per hour. In all it took her minutes to reach her friend's house. In kilometers rounded to the nearest tenth, how far did Samia walk?
Chantal and Jean start hiking from a trailhead toward a fire tower. Jean is wearing a heavy backpack and walks slower. Chantal starts walking at miles per hour. Halfway to the tower, the trail becomes really steep, and Chantal slows down to miles per hour. After reaching the tower, she immediately turns around and descends the steep part of the trail at miles per hour. She meets Jean at the halfway point. What was Jean's average speed, in miles per hour, until they meet?
Every morning, Aya does a kilometer walk, and then finishes at the coffee shop. One day, she walks at kilometers per hour, and the walk takes hours, including minutes at the coffee shop. Another morning, she walks at kilometers per hour, and the walk takes hours and minutes, including minutes at the coffee shop. This morning, if she walks at kilometers per hour, how many minutes will the walk take, including the minutes at the coffee shop?
Roy bought a new battery-gasoline hybrid car. On a trip the car ran exclusively on its battery for the first miles, then ran exclusively on gasoline for the rest of the trip, using gasoline at a rate of gallons per mile. On the whole trip he averaged miles per gallon. How long was the trip in miles?
Rudolph bikes at a constant rate and stops for a five-minute break at the end of every mile. Jennifer bikes at a constant rate which is three-quarters the rate that Rudolph bikes, but Jennifer takes a five-minute break at the end of every two miles. Jennifer and Rudolph begin biking at the same time and arrive at the -mile mark at exactly the same time. How many minutes has it taken them?
In this section you will be able to add or subtract speeds for movers heading toward or after each other, and handle escalators and moving walkways.
Walking down an up-escalator, Al counts 150 steps. Bob walks up and counts only 75. How many steps does the escalator show?
When two things move, look at the gap between them. Heading toward each other, the gap closes at the sum of the speeds. Chasing, it closes at the difference.
A moving walkway or escalator just adds its speed to everyone riding it. The steps you count are only the ones your own feet take.
Al walks down to the bottom of an escalator that is moving up and he counts steps. His friend, Bob, walks up to the top of the escalator and counts steps. If Al's speed of walking (in steps per unit time) is three times Bob's walking speed, how many steps are visible on the escalator at a given time? (Assume that this value is constant.)
Only the ratio of speeds matters, so say Bob walks step per second and Al walks . Al counts steps. How many seconds is he on the escalator?
A foot long moving walkway moves at a constant rate of feet per second. Al steps onto the start of the walkway and stands. Bob steps onto the start of the walkway two seconds later and strolls forward along the walkway at a constant rate of feet per second. Two seconds after that, Cy reaches the start of the walkway and walks briskly forward beside the walkway at a constant rate of feet per second. At a certain time, one of these three persons is exactly halfway between the other two. At that time, find the distance in feet between the start of the walkway and the middle person.
How fast does Bob move over the ground?
A car passes point driving at a constant rate of km per hour. A second car, traveling at a constant rate of km per hour, passes the same point a while later and then follows the first car. It catches the first car after traveling a distance of km past point . How many minutes after the first car passed point did the second car pass point ?
Andrea and Lauren are kilometers apart. They bike toward one another with Andrea traveling three times as fast as Lauren, and the distance between them decreasing at a rate of kilometer per minute. After minutes, Andrea stops biking because of a flat tire and waits for Lauren. After how many minutes from the time they started to bike does Lauren reach Andrea?
While Steve and LeRoy are fishing mile from shore, their boat springs a leak, and water comes in at a constant rate of gallons per minute. The boat will sink if it takes in more than gallons of water. Steve starts rowing towards the shore at a constant rate of miles per hour while LeRoy bails water out of the boat. What is the slowest rate, in gallons per minute, at which LeRoy can bail if they are to reach the shore without sinking?
Jon and Steve ride their bicycles along a path that parallels two side-by-side train tracks running the east/west direction. Jon rides east at miles per hour, and Steve rides west at miles per hour. Two trains of equal length, traveling in opposite directions at constant but different speeds each pass the two riders. Each train takes exactly minute to go past Jon. The westbound train takes times as long as the eastbound train to go past Steve. The length of each train is miles, where and are relatively prime positive integers. Find .
In this section you will be able to put rates, equations and geometry together on two harder AIME problems.
Two last AIME problems: one hides a system of equations with whole-number answers, the other sends three bikers around a field. Write distance = speed × time for every person first.
The other practice problems sit in sections 20.0a and 20.0b, next to the ideas they use. Want them all on one page? Open the problem set.
Ed and Sue bike at equal and constant rates. Similarly, they jog at equal and constant rates, and they swim at equal and constant rates. Ed covers kilometers after biking for hours, jogging for hours, and swimming for hours, while Sue covers kilometers after jogging for hours, swimming for hours, and biking for hours. Their biking, jogging, and swimming rates are all whole numbers of kilometers per hour. Find the sum of the squares of Ed's biking, jogging, and swimming rates.
Ana, Bob, and Cao bike at constant rates of meters per second, meters per second, and meters per second, respectively. They all begin biking at the same time from the northeast corner of a rectangular field whose longer side runs due west. Ana starts biking along the edge of the field, initially heading west, Bob starts biking along the edge of the field, initially heading south, and Cao bikes in a straight line across the field to a point on the south edge of the field. Cao arrives at point at the same time that Ana and Bob arrive at for the first time. The ratio of the field's length to the field's width to the distance from point to the southeast corner of the field can be represented as , where , , and are positive integers with and relatively prime. Find .