a father and his son can clean the house together in 5 hours. When the son works alone, it take him an hour longer to clean than it takes his dad alone. find how long it takes the son to clean alone.

5/x + 5/x+1 = x(x+1) is that not how you set it up? Then after you use the quadratic formula to solve? But I keep coming to:

9 + - √101 / 2

i've reworked this a few times and i keep coming to the same point in the problem

9 + - √101 / 2

Quadratic formula here to find x.
x = 9.524937811 (disregard the -0.5 value)

Dad works at 1/(x) (which would be this 9.525 number)
Son works at 1/(x+1) = 1/10.524937811 (essentially just +1 of what you solved for x)

This post was edited by EwokHellKite on Apr 20 2015 01:30pm

5x+5y=1 ,xz=1, y(z-1)=1
x=rate
y=rate
z=hour

This post was edited by saber_x3 on Apr 20 2015 04:55pm