Re: Working alone, pump A can empty a pool in 3 hours. Working a
[#permalink]
23 Jun 2020, 10:45
Pump A takes 3 hours to empty the entire pool, thus in 1 hour it empties 1/3 of the pool
Pump B takes 2 hours to empty the entire pool, thus in 1 hour it empties 1/2 of the pool
If working together, in 1 hour 1/3 of the total pool's volume will be empties by pump A and 1/2 of the total pool volume will be emptied by pump B. If you add 1/2 and 1/3 you get 5/6 of the pool being emptied by two pumps working in 1 hour. Now you are just left with 1/6 of the pool to be emptied. Since it took two pumps 60 min to empty 5/6 of the pool, it will take them a fifth of the hour to empty the remaining 1/6th (which is 12 min: 60/5).
Thus total time needed is 1 hour and 12 min which equals to 72 min