Question

A student spends no more than 2 hours on his math and English homework. If math takes about twice as long as English, what is the maximum time that the student can spend on English?

Answer 1

Answer: I'm pretty sure it's 40 minutes

Explanation:

2 hours is 120 minutes and if one subject takes double the time of the other than you basically just have to divide 120 by three. I hope you get what I'm saying cause I'm bad at explaining.

Answer 2

40 minutes (or 2/3 hours.)

Explanation:

Let the no. of hours the student spend on English be t.

Since math takes twice as long as English, the no. of hours the student takes on math will be 2t.

With the information, we can write this equation:

t + 2t ≤ 2

(≤ symbol is used because the maximum time spent is 2 hours, meaning the student can spend any no. of hours between 0 and 2, including 2 hours exactly.)

Solve the equation like usual (you can take the ≤ sign like =)

t + 2t ≤ 2

3t ≤ 2

t ≤ 2/3 (or 0.666666... hours)

So the maximum amount of time is 2/3 hours.

Multiply 2/3 by 60 to get the time in minutes

2/3 x 60

= 40minutes

So the answer is 40 minutes or 2/3 hours.