Question

Mrs. Stevenson, the P.E. teacher, is pairing off students to race against each other. Elizabeth can run 5 yards per second, and Paul can run 6 yards per second. Mrs. Stevenson decides to give Elizabeth a head start of 5 yards since she runs more slowly. Once the students start running, Paul will quickly catch up to Elizabeth. How long will that take?

Answer 1

5 seconds

Explanation:

Let's start by finding out how far Elizabeth runs during the time it takes for Paul to catch up to her.

Let t be the time it takes for Paul to catch up to Elizabeth. During this time, Elizabeth runs 5t yards and Paul runs 6t yards.

Since Elizabeth gets a head start of 5 yards, we can set up the following equation:

5t + 5 = 6t

Simplifying this equation, we get:

5 = t

Therefore, it will take Paul 5 seconds to catch up to Elizabeth.