Suppose you are flying from Pittsburgh, PA to Los Angeles, CA. The distance between the cities is 2,400 miles and the plane's speed is 450 mi/hr. What is the speed of the wind?

Any help?

5 answers

Also, the trip is going to take 11 hours.

I got a formula of: 11 = 2400/450+x + 2400/450-x

I got 10.7 with decimals but any other help would be great.
looks good, except that online, due to formatting handicaps, you should use parentheses to remove ambiguity:

11 = 2400/(450+x) + 2400/(450-x)
I was told that the wind speed is 50, but I'm not sure how to get there.
the wind speed is clearly not 50, since

2400/500 + 2400/400 = 10.8, not 11

You have solved for a round trip. The problem didn't say that, but taking 11 hours for one-way means a speed of about 218 mph, too slow.

Something is screwy with this problem.

Solving your equation gives x ≈ 78.335
Right? I got that also. I used an online calc and I got 150 sqrt 33/11 to get x ~= 78.335!