Saturday, November 14, 2009

Work Problem 4 Solution

This is the solution to the algebra work word problem # 4 which read: "Joe and Jim paint a house. Joe can paint it alone in 5 days, Jim in 8 days. They start to paint it together but after 2 days Jim stops. How long will Joe finish it alone?"

Joe takes 5 days
Jim 8
to paint a house

So Joe can do 1/5 of his job in one day and Jim can do 1/8th of his job in 1 day. If you just take Joe for example you can see where I'm heading on solving this problem. Joe can do 1/5th of his job in one day. So how long would he finish his job -- well besides knowing the answer already -- you would set it up as x/5 = 1. 1 being when the job is complete not just a "fraction" of his work being done. So the answer is 5 of course 5/5 = 1. You use this exact same method to solve the problem for both Joe and Jim.

**********Correction************ I realized I solved the problem before if they both continued working the job, but this problem states JIM stops working in 2 days. So Joe does x/5 part of his job in 2 days? 2/5 and Jim does x/8 part of his job in 2 days? 2/8, and Joe keeps working. So the equation would be

2/5 + 2/8 + x/5 = 1 multiply by 40 and get
16 + 10 + 8x = 40

26 + 8x = 40
8x = 40 - 26
8x = 14
x = 14/8 or 1 and 3/4ths so it would take 1 and 3/4ths days more for Joe to finish the job alone..



Interested in improving you brain the fun way? Check out BrainGamesFun.com