Question

The track team is trying to reduce their time for a relay race. First they reduce their time by 2.1 minutes. Then they are able to reduce that time by 10 If their final time is 3.96 minutes, what was their beginning time? Show or explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

To find the track team's original time, we add back the 2.1 minutes they initially reduced and then reverse the 10% time reduction, finally determining their beginning time to be approximately 6.7333 minutes.

Step-by-step explanation:

The track team's beginning time can be calculated by working backwards from their final time. They first improved their time by reducing it by 10%, and then by reducing their time by an additional 2.1 minutes. With the given final time of 3.96 minutes, we can calculate the time after the first reduction (before the 10% reduction) by adding 2.1 minutes to the final time.

3.96 minutes + 2.1 minutes = 6.06 minutes

Next, we reverse the 10% reduction. To find the original time before the 10% reduction, we divide by 0.9 (since the remaining time after the reduction is 90% of the original time).

6.06 minutes / 0.9 ≈ 6.7333 minutes

Therefore, the track team's beginning time was approximately 6.7333 minutes.