Question

A red balloon is 40 feet above the ground and rising at 2 feet per second. At the same time, a blue balloon is 60 feet above the ground and falling at a rate of 3 feet per second. How long will it take for the two balloons to be the same height from the ground? Let s = the number of seconds since the balloons began moving.

WRITE AN EQUATION FOR THIS.

Answer 1

40+2s=60-3s

Explanation:

The red balloon starts 40 feet off the ground and rises 2 feet per second. This means the height of the red ballon is 40+2s.

The blue balloon starts 60 feet off the ground at starts falling 3 feet per second. This means the height of the blue balloon is 60-3s.

Because we want to find out when the balloons will be the same height, we set them equal to each other.

40+2s=60-3s