Question

An airplane takes 4.5 hours to travel 913.5 miles while flying against the wind. If the speed of the airplane on awindless day is 237 miles per hour, what is the speed of the wind?The wind ismiles ? per hour.

Answer 1

Let's call the speed of the wind as w, and the speed of the plane when its windless as p.

Since an airplane takes 4.5 hours to travel 913.5 miles while flying against the wind, to find its speed we just need to divide the distance travelled by the time

`p_(aw)=(913.5)/(4.5)=203`

When the plane is flying against the wind, its speed is equal to the speed of the plane when its windless minus the speed of the wind.

`p_(aw)=p-w`

Since we already know the speed of the plane on both situations, we can substitute those values on the expression above and solve for w.

`203=237-w\Rightarrow w=34`

The speed of the wind is 34 miles/h.