From the course: Test Prep: GRE

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Work

Work

From the course: Test Prep: GRE

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Work

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- [Voiceover] In this problem I'm going to go through an example of a work word problem. So we see that Gaston can paint x square meters in 14 minutes, and then Kathryn takes 21 minutes to paint the same amount. So if they begin painting at the same time, how many minutes will it take for their total to be that number? There's a couple ways we can do this. I'll start with the formula way, and I say that with a little hesitation just because the formula doesn't always work in the GRE. If you have a real GRE-style word problem, you're not always just going to be able to plug in nice and neatly, so I'll show you another way as well. But that formula for work is that one over sort of the first rate plus one over the second rate is going to be one over the total. So I'll show you what I mean by that. One over Gaston's rate, plus one over Kathryn's rate equals one over the total. So if we solve this, we should be able to solve for how many minutes it'll take them to paint that x square…

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