Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer

1. Dima is driving on a straight highway from point A to point B. From point B, a traffic jam is moving towards Dima, and the length of the jam is increasing at a speed of vv km/h. The speed of the car in the traffic jam is 10 km/h, and outside the jam - 60 km/h. The navigator in the car shows at any moment how much time is left for Dima to reach point B, based on the length of the traffic jam at that moment. At some point (before reaching the traffic jam), Dima noticed that the navigator shows the same time as it did a few minutes ago. Find vv.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Answer (in both cases): 12 km/h. Let the time between two identical GPS readings be tt hours. During this time, the distance between the car and the traffic jam decreased by (60+v)t(60+v) t km, so the time to cover this distance (from the GPS's perspective) decreased by (60+v)t/60(60+v) t / 60 hours. On the other hand, the traffic jam extended by vtvt km, and the time to pass through it increased by vt/10vt/10 hours. These two quantities should be equal, i.e., (60+v)t=6vt(60+v) t=6 v t, from which v=12km/hv=12 \mathrm{km} / \mathrm{h}.

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