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three friends tom lisa and alex are painting a mural. tom paints a section every 15 min and lisa paints a section every 20 min and alex paints a section every 25 mins when will they all finished painting the sections the same time

User Bellackn
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

Tom, Lisa, and Alex will all finish painting a section at the same time every 300 minutes, or 5 hours, calculated by finding the Least Common Multiple of 15, 20, and 25 minutes. So, Tom, Lisa, and Alex will all finish painting a section of the mural at the same time every 300 minutes, or 5 hours.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find out when Tom, Lisa, and Alex will finish painting the sections at the same time, we need to calculate the Least Common Multiple (LCM) of their individual painting intervals: 15 minutes for Tom, 20 minutes for Lisa, and 25 minutes for Alex. The LCM of 15, 20, and 25 is the smallest number that all three of these numbers can divide into evenly.

Here are the steps to find the LCM:

  1. List the prime factors for each number: 15 = 3 × 5, 20 = 2² × 5, 25 = 5².
  2. For each different prime factor, take the highest power of that factor from all the numbers: 2² from 20, 3 from 15, and 5² from 25.
  3. Multiply these together to get the LCM: LCM = 2² × 3 × 5² = 4 × 3 × 25 = 300.

So, Tom, Lisa, and Alex will all finish painting a section of the mural at the same time every 300 minutes, or 5 hours.

User Enzo
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