Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /223 of 520

Algebra Difficulty 2.9 Junior Find the answer

Karl's car uses a gallon of gas every 3535 miles, and his gas tank holds 1414 gallons when it is full. One day, Karl started with a full tank of gas, drove 350350 miles, bought 88 gallons of gas, and continued driving to his destination. When he arrived, his gas tank was half full. How many miles did Karl drive that day?
(A)\mbox525\text{(A)}\mbox{ }525(B)\mbox560\text{(B)}\mbox{ }560(C)\mbox595\text{(C)}\mbox{ }595(D)\mbox665\text{(D)}\mbox{ }665(E)\mbox735\text{(E)}\mbox{ }735

Multiple choice: answer with the letter of the option you want.

Solution

Since he uses a gallon of gas every 3535 miles, he had used 35035=10\frac{350}{35} = 10 gallons after 350350 miles. Therefore, after the first leg of his trip he had 1410=414 - 10 = 4 gallons of gas left. Then, he bought 88 gallons of gas, which brought him up to 1212 gallons of gas in his gas tank. When he arrived, he had 1214=7\frac{1}{2} \cdot 14 = 7 gallons of gas. So he used 55 gallons of gas on the second leg of his trip. Therefore, the second part of his trip covered 535=1755 \cdot 35 = 175 miles. Adding this to the 350350 miles, we see that he drove 350+175=(A)525350 + 175 = \boxed{\textbf{(A)} \, 525} miles.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.