Question

One printing press can print the whole school newspaper in 12 hours, while another press can print in 18 hours. How long will the job take if both presses work simultaneously?

Answer 1

7 Hours 12 Minutes

Explanation:

So they one of the printer increases at a rate of 1/12 and the other increases at a rate of 1/18. Since you don't know the time it actually takes, you will replace both numerators with and x. (x/12 and x/18). You want to set these up so that they are adding. (x/12 + x/18=1). Since you're adding, you want to change it to the same denominator. The lowest is 36 so you multiply x/12 by 3/3 (so you don't unbalance the equation) and x/18 by 2/2. You'll end up with 3x/36 + 2x/36= 1 which will simplify to 5x/36=1. Multiply each side by 36 to leave the variable by itself. It becomes 5x=36 and when you divide it by 5 you get 7.2. So it's seven and .2 hours, which is equivalent to7 and 1/5 of an hour or 7 hours and 12 minutes.