Math question too complicated for 120 character limit. Please, see "detail" section of question. Thanks.?

Question

Your ship has steamed 1856 miles at 18 knots using 545 tons of fuel oil. The distance remaining to your next port is1978 miles. If you increase speed to 22 knots, how much fuel will be used to reach that port? Thanks in advance for your attempts at the answer.

Answer 1

I don't think there's enough information here.  Or are we assuming that the rate of fuel consumption is the same at every speed?  That can't be right, surely?

Answer 2

I agree its a poorly worded problem, makes you make assumptions I'd never make in the real world

What I'm assuming is that this is a proportion problem and that fuel usage is proportional to speed (which is not true in the real world!)

So, if it took 545 tons to go 1856 miles that is 0.294 tons/mile at 18 knots

The proportion of speeds is 22/18  so use this to bump up the tons/mile  = 0.359

Then just use this and the total new milage

1978 * 0.359 = 710 tons

I also think the wording indicates you need to add the two to get "fuel to reach that port) so you could also add 545 and 710 to get grand total of 1255 tons

I really wish authors did a better job writing problems.  I help my 2nd/3rd grader with his math homework and most of the issue is figuring out what the problem means and guessing what assumptions to make, if I tried to do engineering problems like they do I'd be looking for a new job in seconds