Question

The town of West is 10 miles to the west of Center town while the town of East is 10 miles to the East of Centretown. One sunny day, as shown in the diagram below:

A green car starts to drive down towards the town of East at the speed of 2 miles per minute.
At the same time. a red car also starts to drive down towards the town of East at a speed of 1 mile per minute.
Coincidentally, at the very same time a blue car leaves the town of East to travel towards the Center town at a speed of ½ mile per minute.


Transcribe slope-intercept form equations for each car representing the distance each car travels with respect to time:

Answer 1

d = 2t

d = t

d = 0.5t

Explanation:

For an object in motion at constant velocity, the distance covered by the object in a time t is given by:

`d=vt`

where

d is the distance

v is the speed

t is the time

The distance is the total length of the path covered by the object in motion, regardless of its direction, so here we only care about the distance covered by each car, not about its direction.

The green car travels with a speed of

v = 2 mi/min

So the distance it covers is

`d=2t`

where t is in minutes while d is in miles.

Similarly, the speed of the red car is

`v=1 mi/min`

So its distance covered is

`d=1t`

Finally, the speed of the blue car is

v = 0.5 mi/min

So its distance is

`d=0.5t`