MATH *Cue scary music* a.k.a The Trip Blog

Way to fool us with your magical physics trickery Mrs. Lawrence! My initial answer to the trip problem was 60km/h because when I pulled out my fancy Algebra II skills that's what I came up with! It looked something like this:

(60+40+20+x)/4= 40

Do your addition, division and such and you come up with 60 km/h.
BUT WAIT!!!! 
I forgot one little detail that, I guess, isn't so little at all.

TIME

(notice how the original problem was in red, INCORRECT, and time was written in green CORRECT. Genius.)

When I factored in time I found out that The correct answer was faster than the speed of light. The motorist, to reach his destination in the manner he wished, would have to go FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT!You have to reason that the driver has been going at a speed of 40 km/h for 30 minutes, and then at a speed of 20 km/h for the next 30 minutes. He was ALREADY driving for a full hour, therefore, the only way for him to average 40 km/h would be to drive faster than the speed of light.

AMAZING! (yay science!)

I learned to pay attention to every part of the problem, taking into account all important details such as time!