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armolinasf
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Homework Statement
This is a question from Gelfand's Algebra:
A boat traveling upstream from A to B can cover the distance in a hours. The boat can travel downstream from B to A in b hours. How long would it take to travel from A to B if there was no current?
The Attempt at a Solution
To make it a little more concrete I plugged in numbers, a=3 and b=2
So, my thinking is that if the boat can cover x distance in 3 hours and the same x distance in 2 hours, then the answer would simply be the average of the two speeds:
((x/2)+(x/3))/2 = 5x/12
But this answer dosen't make sense since the time it would take to travel the distance without the current must be between two and three hours
Im a little bit at a loss of how to think about this one.
thanks for the help