Question

If a car averages `50 1/3` miles per hour, how many hours will it take to go `47 1/2` miles?

Answer 1

`285/302~~ 0.9437` of an hour.

Explanation:

The first thing you need to do is to decide what operation you need to do. 'Miles per hour' indicates a speed and 'miles' indicates a distance. The question is 'How many hours?' which means you are trying to find a time:

`"time" = "distance"/"speed"`

So you need to divide two fractions.

• change to improper fractions
• multiply by the reciprocal of the second fraction
• cancel where possible and simplify.

`47 1/2 div 50 1/3`

=`95/2 div 151/3`

=`95/2 xx 3/151`

=`285/302` of an hour. This does not simplify further.

As a decimal this gives `0.9437`

Which is about `56.6` minutes.