Question

You are driving to a vacation spot that is 1500 miles away. Including rest stops, it takes you 42 hours to get to the vacation spot. You estimate that you drove at an average speed of 50 miles per hour. How many hours were you NOT driving. Show all work!

Answer 1

12 hours

Explanation:

The formula for distance is
`d=rt`, distance = rate multiplied by time.

We know that you travel at 50 mph, which is our rate, and we travelled for 42 hours, which is the time.

So the distance is
`42\cdot 50 = 2100` miles.

However, we weren't constantly driving at a speed of 50 mph - once in a while we were driving at 0 mph because we had taken rests.

That means the total miles lost for taking rests will be
`2100-1500 = 600` miles.

Since we travel at a speed of 50 mph, that means we spent a total of
`600/ 50 = 12` hours not driving.

Hope this helped!