Mail-order pharmacies typically use machines to count pills and dispense them into bottles, particularly pills that are prescrib
ed on a regular basis by physicians, such as blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, and diabetes medicine. Suppose a pharmacy has two pill counters that work in tandem (together). The batch of blood pressure pills in 1 hour, and the second counter can finish the same batch in 40 minutes. How many minutes should it take to finish a typical batch if both pill counters work together? A) 18
B) 24
C) 36
D) 50
it takes 60 minutes for one and 40 for another. since you don't know the time. the denominator is going to be x. The equation to solve this problem will be x/60 + x/40 = 1. Since you're adding, you want to have the same denominator. ( i chose to do 120) this will change the problem to 2x/120 + 3x/120 = 1. which will simplify to 5x/120=1. Multiply each side by 120 to get 5x=120 and divide each side by 5 to get x=24.
