Question

A tire shop had to fill 3 1/2 tires with air. It took a small aircompressor 3 3/5 seconds to fill them up. How long would it take to fill 3 tires?

Answer 1

To solve this problem we need to first find the time it takes for the compressor to fill one tire. This is done by dividing the total time by the total number of tires filled in that time.

`\begin{gathered} \text{tires = 3}(1)/(2)\text{ = }(6)/(2)+(1)/(2)\text{ = }(7)/(2)\text{ = 3.5} \\ time\text{ =3 }(3)/(5)\text{ = }(15)/(5)+\text{ }(3)/(5)\text{ = }(18)/(5)\text{ = 3.6} \end{gathered}`
`\text{rate = }(3.6)/(3.5)\text{ = }1.03\text{ s}/\text{tire}`

It takes 1.03 seconds per tire. If we need to fill 3 tires we will have to multiply the time it takes to fill one by 3.

`\text{total time = 3}\cdot1.03\text{ = 3.09 s}`

It'd take 3.09 s.