From: Claudia (for Teacher2Teacher Service)
Date: Apr 12, 2001 at 21:41:30
Subject: Re: Adding and subtracting polynomial fractions

Most of the applications for polynomial fractions have to do with more
complicated ideas like uniform motion and work/rate problems.  Here are a
couple of examples that might help.

1)  Suppose you had a piece of wire 8 meters long which needed to be cut
into two pieces.  Each piece would then be bent into a square. Where should
the wire be cut if the sum of the areas of the two squares needs to be 2
square meters?

   Let x = one piece, then 8-x = other piece
   x/4 = side of first sq.  (8-x)/4 = side of second sq.
   (x/4)^2 + ((8-x)/4)^2 = 2

Guess the squares might make this too complicated???

  Suppose one son is asked to mow the yard at 10am on a Saturday. Working
alone it takes him 4 hours to do the job. His older brother takes 6 hours to
do the job when he works alone.  Since the boys have a soccer game at 1pm,
they decide to work together.  How long will it take them together? Will
they make it to the game on time?

   (t/4) + (t/6) = 1

good luck
 -Claudia, for the T2T service

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