At general Electric, shift 1 produced 4 times as much as shift 2. General Electric’s total production for July was 5,500 jet engines. What was the output for each shift.

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Originally Posted by jjen

At general Electric, shift 1 produced 4 times as much as shift 2. General Electric’s total production for July was 5,500 jet engines. What was the output for each shift.

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Ok, I'm going to help you here by solving a similar example.

Imagine a problem like this:
John ran twice as many miles as Bob. If they ran 30 miles together, how many miles did each man run?

You solve such problems like this: you pick one "variable" (for example, how many miles Bob ran) and you pronounce it as "x". So, you can say Bob = x. After declaring that, you know that John ran twice as many miles, so he ran John = 2*x miles. You know they both ran 30 miles. It means that Bob + John = 30 which is the same as x + 2*x = 30, which means 3*x = 30, which means x = 10. Now, because you know that Bob ran x miles, you know that Bob ran 10 miles. You know that John = 2*x, so he ran 20 miles.

Of course, you could have solved the problem by declaring that John = x. Then, Bob would be Bob = x/2, and you would have x + x/2 = 30. (3/2)*x = 30, which means x = 20. Because John = x, you know that John ran 20 miles, and because Bob = x/2 that means Bob ran 10 miles.

So you see, whatever you set as "x", you should get the same outcome. So now, just apply the same procedure on your problem.

Hi,
Is this an Algebra question?
If so, here is a start:

x = output by shift 2
4x = output by shift 1
(this comes from "shift 1 produced 4 times as much as shift 2")

Then,
x + 4x = 5,500 , hope you can finish it from here.

When you solve for x, that will be the output for shift 2.