Asked by Sandy East Ward

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?
Answered by Sandy East Ward
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.
Answered by Steve
looks good, except that online, due to formatting handicaps, you should use parentheses to remove ambiguity:

11 = 2400/(450+x) + 2400/(450-x)
Answered by Sandy East Ward
I was told that the wind speed is 50, but I'm not sure how to get there.
Answered by Steve
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
Answered by Sandy East Ward
Right? I got that also. I used an online calc and I got 150 sqrt 33/11 to get x ~= 78.335!
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