Two long time friends want to meet for lunch on a free weekend. One friend Ann, lives in Portland, and the other, Bill, lives in Seattle. They decide to meet somewhere on the 200-mile stretch connecting the two cities, and they start driving simultaneously from their respective cities toward each other along the same route. Ann drives an average of 50 miles per hour, and Bill drives an average of 70 miles per hour. Approximately how many miles from Portland will the two meet?
A. 56.7
B. 60.0
C. 72.5
D. 83.3
E. 96.7
How will try to solve without pen and paper.. This is how
A travels from P and B from S. Now that we know B travels more than A because he drives faster, A would travel less than half of the distance between P and S.
The two would cover distance in the ratio of 5:7 i.e. A travels 5 parts of the distance 200km and B travels 7 parts. Eventually now we have 12 parts(5 + 7).
Note that they meet at some point and at that time they travelled for same amount of time.
B must travelled more than 100 km but this fact is useless for this question since all answer choices are less than that.
Now 1 part of 200km equals roughly 17km (200/12) and A travels 5 parts i.e. ~85km
Answer D.