Question

the office jet printer can copy maria's dissertation in 16min the laser jet printer can copy the same document in 8min if the two machines work together how long would they take to copy the dissertation

Answer 1

These problems are solved in the following way:

x / 16 + x / 8 = 1

Bringing these two fractions to the common denominator (which, in this case, is 16), we get the following:

x / 16 + 2x / 16= 1

3x / 16 = 1

Solving the above equation for x, we get the following:

x = 1 : 3/16 [reciprocal]

x = 16 / 3 = 5.3 min

and 5.3 min = [approximately] 5 minutes 20 seconds