Problema Solution

A tourist rents a beach cruiser to bike along a long flat stretch of beach. Biking with the wind, it takes 8 minutes to travel 2 miles. Biking against the wind, the return trip takes 14 minutes. If there was no wind, how fast was the cyclist biking? Round to the nearest 0.1 mph.

Answer provided by our tutors

let 's' represent the speed of the cyclist with no wind, let 'v' represent the speed of the wind


distance = speed * time


8 minutes = 8/60 hours

14 minutes = 14/60 hours


we have these equations:

2 = (s+v)(8/60)

2 = (s-v)(14/60)

solving this system we have:

s = 11.785

v = 3.214


the cyclist would have been travelling at approximately 11.8 mph with no wind