Doing homework and came across this problem that has me totally stumped...

On Monday, Voltaire drove to town at 60 miles per hour. On Tuesday, he drove to town at 40 miles per hour. If the total traveling time for both trips was 15 hours, how far was it to town?

Use the formula distance = rate times time (d = r*t).

Unfortunately, I did that (15)(60)+(15)(40) and came up with 1500..which is way to big of a distance, any suggestions past this point?

To find the distance Voltaire traveled to town, we need to use the formula:

distance = speed * time

Let's first find the time it took for each trip:

On Monday, Voltaire drove at 60 miles per hour, so if we let t be the time in hours, we have:

t = distance / speed
t = distance / 60

On Tuesday, Voltaire drove at 40 miles per hour, so again using t as the time in hours:

t = distance / speed
t = distance / 40

We are given that the total traveling time for both trips was 15 hours. Therefore, we can set up the equation:

t + t = 15

Substituting the expressions we found earlier for t:

(distance / 60) + (distance / 40) = 15

Now, let's solve for the distance:

To simplify the equation, we can find a common denominator, which in this case is 120:

(2 * distance / 120) + (3 * distance / 120) = 15

Multiplying through by 120 to clear the fractions:

2 * distance + 3 * distance = 15 * 120

5 * distance = 1800

Finally, we divide both sides by 5 to solve for the distance:

distance = 1800 / 5
distance = 360

Therefore, the distance to town is 360 miles.