Question

George and Cameron went on a bicycle trip.They took a bus to the starting point, and then biked the rest. They traveled 275 km in total, and they biked 55 km more than they were bussed. If x=km traveled by bike and y=km traveled by bus, how many kilometers were traveled by bike?

Answer 1

In this type of problem, we would want to use a system of linear equations.

First, we need to find our equations. We know that the two boys traveled 275 km in total, and since x and y count the distance traveled (just in different modes of travel), we can write: x + y = 275.

Next, the problem says that they biked 55 km more than they bussed. So, x = y + 55.

Now that we have two equations to solve for two variables, we can lay them out next to each other:

x + y = 275

x = y + 55

We see that we can substitute x in the first equation with y + 55. This gives us

(y + 55) + y = 275

We solve for y and get y = 110 km by bus. But, we want to know how far they traveled by bike. So, since x = y + 55 and y = 110, we can solve for x by doing 110 + 55 = 165 km by bike.

The answer is 165 kilometers.