A certain printer can print at the rate of 80 characters per sound, and there is an average of 2,400 characters per page.If the printer continued to print at this rate, how many minutes would it take to print an M-page report?
a) m/30
b) m/60
c) m/2
d) 2/m
e) 60/m
This must be a problem from an older book. Printers today do not print a line at a time, but let's assume that's the case (for a "matrix" printer).
80 characters / second
2400 characters / page
means
2400/80=30 seconds / page
= 30/60= 1/2 minute / page
If we have to print M pages, time taken is therefore
M(1/2) = M/2 minutes.
To find the time it takes to print an M-page report, we need to determine the total number of characters in the report and then divide that by the total number of characters the printer can print per second.
First, let's find the total number of characters in the report. Since there are 2,400 characters per page and we have M pages, the total number of characters will be 2,400 * M.
Next, we divide the total number of characters by the printer's rate of 80 characters per second to find the time it takes to print the report in seconds. This can be represented as:
(2,400 * M) / 80.
To convert the time from seconds to minutes, we divide by 60:
(2,400 * M) / 80 / 60.
Simplifying the equation, we get:
30 * M / 80.
Since we are looking for the time in minutes, the correct answer is:
a) M / 30.
To calculate the time it would take to print an M-page report, we need to first find out how many characters need to be printed.
Since there are 2,400 characters per page, the total number of characters to be printed for an M-page report is: 2,400 * M = 2,400M.
Now, we can calculate the time it would take to print the M-page report.
The printer can print at a rate of 80 characters per second. To convert this to minutes, we divide it by 60: 80 characters/second = (80/60) characters/minute = 4/3 characters/minute.
Therefore, the time it would take to print the 2,400M characters is: (2,400M) / (4/3) = 1,800M minutes.
So, the correct answer is e) 60/m.