Question

A team of workers could have completed their assigned job in 24 hours if they would have worked together. However, only 1 worker worked during the first hour, a second one started working with him at the beginning of the second hour, a third joined them at the beginning of the third hour, and so on, to the point when all the workers worked together for the remaining several hours. The resulting work time would have been reduced by 6 hours if all but 5 workers worked together from the start. Find the number of workers.

Answer 1

There are 6 workers in the team.

Explanation:

Let's call the number of workers "n".

We know that the team of workers could have completed the job in 24 hours if they had worked together. We also know that the resulting work time would have been reduced by 6 hours if all but 5 workers had worked together from the start.

So, if n workers worked together from the start, the work time would be 24 - 6 = 18 hours.

We also know that the workers joined one by one, starting with 1 worker and ending with n workers working together.

The total work time can be calculated using the arithmetic series formula:

work time = n/2 * (1 + n)

So, if we set the work time to 18 hours:

18 = n/2 * (1 + n)

We can solve this equation for n:

18 = n/2 * (n+1)

36 = n^2 + n

n^2 + n - 36 = 0

We can solve this quadratic equation by factoring it.

(n-6)(n+6) = 0

So the solutions are n = 6 and n = -6.

But the number of workers can not be negative, so the answer is n=6.