Question

Thomas took a 140-mile bus trip to visit his grandparents. His trip is outlined on the graph below.

1) Explain what might have happened in the interval between D and E.

2) State the interval in which the bus traveled the fastest.

3) State how many miles per hour the bus was traveling during this interval.

4) What was the average rate of speed, in miles per hour, for Thomas's entire bus trip?

Answer 1

1) He is not moving in DE.

2) The interval is CD, here we can see the steepest line.

3) The speed here is 60mi/h

4) The average speed of the entire bus trip is 35mi/h.

what might have happened in the interval between D and E?

1) In the segment DE we can see a horizontal line. This means that the position does not change in that hour, so Thomas is not moving in that interval.

2) The steepest one is the interval where the bus traveled the fastest, looking at the graph we can see that it is the second one, CD.

3) We can see that it travelled 90 miles in 3 hours, so the speed is:

S = 90mi/1.5h =60mi/h

4) Here we can see that the total distance is 140 miles, and the total time is 4 hours, then the speed is:

S = 140mi/4h = 35 mi/h