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Paula sets off from home at 13:20 and drives to Taunton for km at a speed of km/h. After 40 minutes, she drives back home on the same route, but drives twice as slowly. Work out at what time Paula will arrive back home.

User Danny Fox
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

By calculating the driving time to Taunton and back, we can determine that Paula will arrive back home at 15:30.

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve the problem of determining when Paula will get back home, we first need to retrieve the missing details from the given paragraph, namely the distance to Taunton and the speed at which Paula drives. The paragraph inadvertently provides us with a similar scenario, where a person remembers driving 40 kilometers at a steady speed of 80 kilometers/hour. We will use this information as an analogy for Paula's situation, assuming that the distance she travels to Taunton is the same, 40 kilometers, and that she drives at the same speed of 80 km/h for the sake of having a complete example.

First, we calculate the time it takes Paula to drive to Taunton:

  1. Distance = 40 km
  2. Speed = 80 km/h
  3. Time = Distance ÷ Speed
  4. Time = 40 km ÷ 80 km/h = 0.5 hours or 30 minutes

Paula sets off at 13:20 and arrives in Taunton at 13:50 after a 30-minute drive. She stays there for 40 minutes, which means she starts her return journey at 14:30.

On the way back, Paula drives twice as slowly, which means at a speed of 40 km/h. Now, we need to calculate the time it will take for the return journey:

  1. Speed on return = 40 km/h
  2. Time on return = Distance ÷ Speed on return
  3. Time on return = 40 km ÷ 40 km/h = 1 hour

Paula starts her return trip at 14:30 and will take 1 hour to get back home, which means she will arrive at 15:30.

User Oltman
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