Question

An ant can crawl 72 inches every 6 minutes. The table below shows the distance the ant can travel for different amounts of time at this rate.According to the table, if the ant moves at a constant speed, what is its speed? (Remember that speed is a unit rate).

Answer 1

Given,

The ant crawls 72 inches every 6 minutes.

And the table of the time and distance covered by the ant.

From the table, the values of distance are,

d₁=6 inches

d₂=12 inches

d₃=18 inches

And the values of corresponding time are,

t₁=0.5 min

t₂=1 min

t₃=1.5 min

The speed of an object is given by the ratio of the distance covered by the object to the time it takes the object to cover the distance.

Thus the speed of the ant is given by,

`v=(d_1)/(t_1)=(d_2)/(t_2)=(d_3)/(t_3)`

On substituting the known values,

`\begin{gathered} v=(6)/(0.5)=(12)/(1)=(18)/(1.5) \\ =12\text{ imches/min} \end{gathered}`

Thus the speed of the ant is 12 inches/min