Question

Bus A and Bus B leave the the bus depot at 2 pm.

Bus A takes 15 minutes to complete its route once and bus B takes 25 minutes to complete its route once.

If both buses continue to repeat their route, at what time will they be back at the bus depot together?

Assume the buses have have no breaks in between routes.

Give your answer as a 12-hour clock time.

Answer 1

3:15 pm

Explanation:

You can imagine that they go in a circle (we can do whatever we want in theoretical math and physics). By doing so we know we can obtain a cosinusoidal wave by projecting the motion on a plane. Each one of the buses has a period (minimum time after what they're in the same point again). For the first one it's 15 minutes, for the second one it's 20 minutes. We have to take the least common multiple of the periods, that is 75 minutes. So They'll meet every 75 minutes. Add 75 minutes (1h and 15 minutes) to 2pm and there you go.