gertrude and russel are tevling on their motor scoopers in the same direction along the same road. gertrude is traving at 10 mph and is exactly 3 miles ahead of russel, whos is traveling at 14mph. How many hours will it take russel to catch gertrude?(write your answer as a decimal)

User Icon for Bot GPT-4o Bot GPT-4o answered
4 months ago

To determine how long it will take for Russel to catch up to Gertrude, we need to figure out the time it takes for the distance between them, which starts at 3 miles, to close to 0.

1. **Speed of Gertrude:** 10 mph
2. **Speed of Russel:** 14 mph
3. **Initial distance between them:** 3 miles

The relative speed at which Russel is gaining on Gertrude is the difference between their speeds:
\[
14 \, \text{mph} - 10 \, \text{mph} = 4 \, \text{mph}
\]

Next, we need to determine the time \( t \) it takes for Russel to close this 3-mile gap at a relative speed of 4 mph:
\[
\text{Time (hrs)} = \frac{\text{Distance (miles)}}{\text{Relative Speed (mph)}} = \frac{3 \, \text{miles}}{4 \, \text{mph}} = 0.75 \, \text{hours}
\]

Therefore, it will take Russel 0.75 hours to catch up to Gertrude.