Distance Work Problems

Question

Hello GMAT Club!
Does anyone have a compilation for the most challenging work/rate and distance/rate problems?
Thank you

bb · Answer

😂😂😂 https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-ps-quest ... 27957.html Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Karimabouelias,

It looks like you've been asking a number of individual questions over the last couple of days (in individual threads instead of 1 big thread). Going forward, it would likely be more efficient to put all of your questions/requests in one place. You noted that you had scored 590 on a recent CAT and that your Score Goal was 650+. With a Q42, the missing points that you are after do NOT require that you learn how to handle really challenging distance/rate questions in the Quant section; as an aside, you could potentially pick up all of those additional points in the Verbal section.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

760+: What GMAT Assassins Do To Score at the Highest Levels

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Karimabouelias . I agree with both   bb   and Rich above: working through Quant questions on a topic-by-topic basis  from the ground up —i.e. NOT focusing on the "most challenging" questions—is a good idea, and GMAT Club has every kind of question under the sun that can help you practice. If I were you, I would check out the  Practice Question Banks  and filter PS or DS questions by Distance/Rate Problems or Work/Rate Problems, for example, but again, if you are scoring in the low 40s in Quant, you really need to get your performance on Easy and Medium questions in tip-top shape before you ought to consider drilling 700-level questions. Practicing Hard questions might prove futile if you keep missing them and rarely get to see such questions anyway on the actual exam because you are making too many mistakes on lower-level questions. The key to a 700+ score is mitigating the damage from Easy and Medium questions, not swinging for the fences, as it were.

I hope that makes sense. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

StevenD · Answer

What are distance word problems?
Distance word problems are a common type of algebra word problems. They involve a scenario in which you need to figure out how fast, how far, or how long one or more objects have traveled. These are often called train problems because one of the most famous types of distance problems involves finding out when two trains heading toward each other cross paths.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to solve train problems and a few other common types of distance problems. But first, let's look at some basic principles that apply to any distance problem.

The basics of distance problems
There are three basic aspects to movement and travel: distance, rate, and time. To understand the difference among these, think about the last time you drove somewhere.

The distance is how far you traveled. The rate is how fast you traveled. The time is how long the trip took.

The relationship among these things can be described by this formula:

distance = rate x time
d = rt

In other words, the distance you drove is equal to the rate at which you drove times the amount of time you drove. For an example of how this would work in real life, just imagine your last trip was like this:

You drove 25 miles—that's the distance.
You drove an average of 50 mph—that's the rate.
The drive took you 30 minutes, or 0.5 hours—that's the time.
According to the formula, if we multiply the rate and time, the product should be our distance.

And it is! We drove 50 mph for 0.5 hours—and 50 ⋅ 0.5 equals 25, which is our distance.

What if we drove 60 mph instead of 50? How far could we drive in 30 minutes? We could use the same formula to figure this out.

60 ⋅ 0.5 is 30, so our distance would be 30 miles.

Solving distance problems
When you solve any distance problem, you'll have to do what we just did—use the formula to find distance, rate, or time. Let's try another simple problem.

On his day off, Lee took a trip to the zoo. He drove an average speed of 65 mph, and it took him two-and-a-half hours to get from his house to the zoo. How far is the zoo from his house?

First, we should identify the information we know. Remember, we're looking for any information about distance, rate, or time. According to the problem:

The rate is 65 mph.
The time is two-and-a-half hours, or 2.5 hours.
The distance is unknown—it's what we're trying to find.
You could picture Lee's trip with a diagram like this:

This diagram is a start to understanding this problem, but we still have to figure out what to do with the numbers for distance, rate, and time. To keep track of the information in the problem, we'll set up a table. (This might seem excessive now, but it's a good habit for even simple problems and can make solving complicated problems much easier.) Here's what our table looks like:

distance rate time
d 65 2.5
We can put this information into our formula: distance = rate ⋅ time.

We can use the distance = rate ⋅ time formula to find the distance Lee traveled.

d = rt

The formula d = rt looks like this when we plug in the numbers from the problem. The unknown distance is represented with the variable d.

d = 65 ⋅ 2.5

To find d, all we have to do is multiply 65 and 2.5. 65 ⋅ 2.5 equals 162.5.

d = 162.5

We have an answer to our problem: d = 162.5. In other words, the distance Lee drove from his house to the zoo is 162.5 miles.

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Distance Work Problems

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