George and Jerry can paint the office in 5 hours working together. Since he is a professional painter, Jerry can paint twice as fast as George. Solve for how long it would take George to paint the office by himself.

Answer 1

Let's say George paints at a speed of x office/hour. Therefore, Jerry, being twice as fast, paints at a speed of 2x office/hour.
Working together, they have a combined speed of 3x office/hour.
From the problem, we know that they can paint the office in 5 hours. So, their combined speed is 1 office/5 hours, or 1/5 office/hour.
Setting the two expressions for speed equal to each other, we get 3x = 1/5.
Solving for x, we get x = 1/15 office/hour.
Therefore, it would take George 15 hours to paint the office by himself because his painting speed is 1/15 office/hour.