"Published in Newark, California, USA"
Jose left for San Fernando, La Union at exactly 12 pm from Quezon City, driving his own car at a constant speed. One hour later, his kid brother drove out after him. Julio, the brother, started out at 40 miles per hour, increasing his speed by 20 miles per hour every half hour until he overtook Jose at exactly 3 pm. At what rate was Jose driving? How far did Julio catch up with his brother?
Solution:
The given word problem is about rate, distance, and time problem but the principles of arithmetic progression is involved. To illustrate, the problem, let's draw a simple figure as follows
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| Photo by Math Principles in Everyday Life |
To get the speed of Julio at 3 pm, let's use the formula to get the last term of arithmetic progression as follows
The distance traveled by Julio to catch up Jose is
The constant speed of Jose is
