Problema Solution

A tourist rents a beach cruiser to bike along a long flat stretch of beach. Biking with the wind, it takes 9 minutes to travel 2 miles. Biking against the wind, the return trip takes 24 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 without wind and 'w' the speed of the wind


distance = speed * time

24 minutes = 24/60 hours


2 = (v+w)*(9/60)

2 = (v-w)*(24/60)


solving this system we have:

v = 9.17

w = 4.17


the cyclist peddles approximately 9.2 miles per hour