Friday, February 27, 2009

Random Math Question

Remember when you were in high school and had to answer questions like this: If you are car A traveling 50 miles per hour and car B is 100 miles away coming toward you at 40 miles per hour, what would you eat for lunch (or something like that)?

Well, here is my question of the day. Let’s say that you are walking at a pace of 3 miles per hour. There is a 10 mph wind at your back. That doesn’t mean that you’re really going 13 miles per hour, right? How fast are you actually walking? Discuss.


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7 comments:

Gilahi said...

This is obviously a trick question. If I'm walking at 10 miles/hour, that means that I'm covering a mile every 6 minutes. 5280 feet divided by 360 seconds means I'm "walking" at a rate of just under 15 feet/second. Surely that at least qualifies as a "jog".

wv: inapple - Where a worm lives.

Nichole Fisher said...

There is a reason I work in education and not accounting. This is it.

Mystery Man said...

I can simply say that you are walking at a speed somewhere between 3 and 13 miles an hour. A more complex solution would be to think of the ability of the wind to move the object. You would need to factor the weight of the object into an equation, which would reduce the speed. I never took physics, but that would probably explain why you are not actually moving 13 miles an hour.

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harper & beatrix said...

the wind only matters if the question is about airplanes and you are doing trig.

~beatrix

Brendon said...

This would mean that if there were a 10 mph wind in your face, you would be walking backwards at 7 mph.

Chuck said...

lol...

"Let’s say that you are walking at a pace of 3 miles per hour." ... some extraneous info ... "How fast are you actually walking?"

Umm... if you're walking at a pace of 3 miles per hour... then you're actually walking at a pace of 3 miles an hour.

Whew, that was a tough one... any other math problems you need solving!

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