One of your friends is heading north for the Christmas holiday and the other friend is heading south.If their destines are 1029 miles apart and one car is traveling at 45 miles per hour and the other car is traveling at 53 miles per hour.How many hours before the two cars pass each other?
I am thinking that they must be due north/South of each other in the beginning, and the on going South started out as the north most .
Their relative velocity is 53+45=98mi/hr
To meet, they travel a combined 1029 mi.
d=rt
1029=98*t
solve for t, the time of meeting.
To find out how many hours before the two cars pass each other, we need to determine how long it takes for the combined distance travelled by the two cars to equal the distance between their destinations.
Let's assume that the car traveling north takes "x" hours to reach the point where the two cars pass each other. Since the car is traveling at 45 miles per hour, the distance it covers in "x" hours is 45x miles.
Similarly, the car traveling south, taking "x" hours to reach the meeting point, will have covered a distance of 53x miles.
Now, if we add up the distances covered by both cars, it should be equal to the total distance between their destinations, which is 1029 miles:
45x + 53x = 1029
Combining like terms:
98x = 1029
Dividing both sides of the equation by 98:
x = 1029 / 98
Calculating the value of x:
x ≈ 10.5
Therefore, it will take approximately 10.5 hours for the two cars to pass each other.
Why should they pass each other at all? Aren't they going in opposite directions, away from each other?
Are they following a great circle route around the earth?