I need help with math Please help me?

Question

Cerise can paint the living room in 2 hours and kyle can paint it in 3 hours. If they work together how long will it take them to complete the job....

Answer 1

There is a "trick" to doing work problems: you have to think of the problem in terms of how much each person / machine / whatever does in a given unit of time.

Let t represent the time they spent in working together:

hours to complete job:

  for Cerise: 2

  for Kyle: 3

  together: t

completed per hour:

for Cerise: 1/2 (1 work in 2 hours)

for Kyle: 1/3 (1 work in 3 hours)

  together: 1/t

adding their labor:

      1/2 + 1/3 = 1/t

      (3 + 2)/6 = 1/t

      5/6 = t

5/6 * 60mins = 50 minutes

They can complete the job in 5/6 of an hr or 50 minutes