How Do You Calculate Average Speed If You're Given Distance and Time in Minutes?

[Cheesus128]

Hey,
This is kinda a thick question but never mind.
A car travels 30KM and that for 30mins.
What is the average speed of the car?Formula is Average speed= Distance Travelled DIVIDED BY Time taken.

But its not 30 DIVIDED by 30 is it?
Is it 30 DIVIDED by 0.5 as 30mins is half of an hour?
And how exactly do you work out say 14mins of 1hour?
(I have the Circle with 3 commas [o,,,] on my calculator, forgot what its called sorry but I don't quiet get how it works.)
Thank you!

 

[Doc Al]

But its not 30 DIVIDED by 30 is it?

That depends on the units you wanted. 30 km/30 minutes = 1 km/min

Is it 30 DIVIDED by 0.5 as 30mins is half of an hour?

That's fine. That will give you km/hour as your units of speed.

And how exactly do you work out say 14mins of 1hour?

How many minutes in an hour? Set up a fraction.

 

[Melgibson]

Your average speed is DeltaX/Deltat if you want your speed in km/hour you can convert your units using dimensional analysis. (km/min) * (60min/hour)

 

[Cheesus128]

Thanks Doc. Understood that.
And thanks Melgibson for the answer even though I am sorry to say I understood nothing of what you said. But still thank you for the effort.

 

[rdl]

Hi there,

To calculate average speed, you are correct that you need to divide the distance traveled by the time taken. In this case, the car traveled 30km in 30 minutes, so the calculation would be 30km / 30 minutes = 1 km/minute.

You are also correct that 30 minutes is half of an hour, so you could also write the time as 0.5 hours. In this case, the calculation would be 30km / 0.5 hours = 60 km/hour.

To calculate a fraction of an hour, like 14 minutes out of 1 hour, you can use the same logic. 14 minutes is 14/60 of an hour, so the calculation would be 30km / (14/60) hours = 128.57 km/hour.

As for the circle with 3 commas on your calculator, it is called a "divide" or "division" symbol. You can use this to divide numbers on your calculator.

I hope this helps clarify how to calculate average speed. Best of luck!