Bunuel
Machines U and T can produce 10,000 units in x hours when working together at their constant rates. If U can produce 10,000 units alone in 4x/3 hours, in terms of x, how many hours will it take T to produce 10,000 units alone?
A. 5x/2
B. 4x
C. 2x
D. x
E. x/2
On combined work / rate problems, you can often sometimes simplify your work by picking numbers for unknowns or awkward quantities.Remember also that you can add rates -- not times.
Here, U's rate + T's rate = combined rate, meaning that:
T's rate = combined rate - U's rate
The amount of work is 10,000 units in all 3 cases, so to simplify things, we can instead say that the amount of work is 1 production lot.
Similarly, let's use x = 1 hour to simplify our work.
Then the combined rate is 1 lot / hour.
U's rate is 1 lot per 4/3 hours, or 3/4 lot / hour.
So, T's rate = 1 - 3/4 = 1/4 lot / hour.
That means it takes T 4 hours to produce 1 lot.
The answer is B. Confirm your answer using common sense. If it took 1 hour together, and it took U 4/3 hours alone (not too much longer), it makes sense that T alone is considerably slower.
While you could also solve using 10,000 and x, picking 1 hour and 1 lot makes your calculations very straightforward. You can use this technique in work / rate problems when the actual values don't matter as long as they are consistent.