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41 votes
When painting a house, the number of days required to paint is inverselyproportional to with the number of workers. One house was painted in 72 days by5 workers. How many days would it take to paint a similar house with 18 workers?

User JD Davis
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1 Answer

6 votes
6 votes

Answer:

20 days

Step-by-step explanation:

When two variables are inversely proportional, the product of the variables is constant. In this case, the variables are the number of workers and the number of days, so we can write the following equation:


72\text{ days }\cdot5\text{ workers = x days }\cdot18\text{ workers}

Where x is the number of days that 18 workers would take to paint a similar house.

Now, we can solve the equation for x:


\begin{gathered} 72\cdot5=x\cdot18 \\ 360=x\cdot18 \\ (360)/(18)=(x\cdot18)/(18) \\ 20=x \end{gathered}

Therefore, 18 workers would take 20 days to paint a similar house.

User Eugene Talagrand
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