Its been 10 years since I graduated high school so when this Math problem came up I had to look twice. My bro was given a little algebra puzzle which I helped him with. After finishing it up I decided to write it all up and ask fellow co-workers (without giving them answers of course) this same problem.
Whether they could do it or not I didn't really care..I just wanted an answer...any answer. It is amazing from our IT staff that rarely anyone got it right. How did folks who got MBAs in MI and BS degrees in various other colleges get stumped by a simple algebra problem.
I decided to post it here to see what others across the world can come up with. Its pretty straightforward and a lot of people do have an idea of how to solve it but they always end up saying well there is one piece of missing information..which is true however even with that missing piece you can solve it.
Ok so the problem:
You have a bath tub in which has 4 faucets (I know pretty odd). One faucet can fill the entire tub in 1 hour. The second faucet can fill the tub in 45 minutes. The third faucet can fill it up in 30 minutes. And finally the last one can fill the entire bath tub in only 15 minutes (note the number of minutes for each faucet is based on the faucet turned on by itself).
Now that you have this info the problem is how long would it take to fill the tub if all faucets are turned on at the same time?
Here is a photo to help :):
Bathtub (4 faucets)
Please no put downs on wrong answers, this is just for us folks who haven't done some algebra in a real long time!!! Tell us your answer, draw it if you have to, just give an answer even if you don't know it, post it!
PS: Mladen you are not allowed to play since you already tried. =)