Question

Five men are employed for strawberry picking. They all don't pick strawberries at the same speed. They

pick in the ratio of 1::2:3-4:5. That is, the second man picks 2 times as many strawberries as the
first in the same amount of time, and the 3rd man picks 3 times as many strawberries as the first, and so
on. To compensate for this, their manager makes the slower men work for more time. In fact, he makes
them spend time in the ratio 5 :: 4 :: 3 :: 2 :: 1. That is, the first man works 5 times longer than the 5th
man, and so on. At the end of the day, the manager realizes that they have not all picked the same
amount of strawberries. Two men have picked 250 strawberies each. Two other men have picked more
then these two. And one man has picked the maximum - more than anyone else. How many
strawberries did this man pick?​

Answer 1

The man who picked the maximum quantity got 450 strawberries.

Step-by-step explanation:

As the speed of the men goes on the ratio 1,2,3,4,5 and the manager decides to set the ratio 5,4,3,2,1 to balance the difference we can say that:

Speed

Man 1 = 1 x

Man 2 = 2 x

Man 3 = 3 x

Man 4 = 4 x

Man 5 = 5 x

where x represents the number of strawberries that they can collect at their specific speed

Then if the hours' ratio works on the inverse stating that the first man works 5 hours we can say that:

Man 1 = 5 hours

Man2 = 4 hours

Man3 = 3 hours

Man4 = 2 hours

Man 1 = 1 hour

taking these as a base the results after a working day for each man would be:

Man 1 = 5 hours (1x) = 5x

Man 2 = 4 hours (2x) = 8x

Man 3 = 3 hours (3x) = 9x

Man 4 = 2 hours (4x) = 8 x

Man 5 = 1 hour (5x) = 5 x

As presented in the problem two-man collected 250 each and two others collected more than these two and another one collected the maximum amount.

Then, Men 1 and 5 have collected the same quantity that is 250

250 = 5 x

x = 50 strawberries

The next pair would be men 2 and 4 who have collected 8 x each

8 x 50 = 400 strawberries

The last man is number 3 who has collected 9x

9 x 50 = 450 strawberries.