Difficulty: Rating: GCSE Marks:

GCSE Text:
A team of bricklayers are helping to construct a new building. There are 7 bricklayers working in the team, and they will complete the outer wall of a new building in 63 days.

The number of days required to complete the job is inversely proportional to the number of bricklayers.

a) Create a formula for the time taken (in days), in terms of the number of bricklayers on the job.

b) If 2 additional bricklayers had been employed from the start of the job, how many fewer days would it take to complete the outer wall of the building?

Suggestions:
This video was made when a school building was being constructed on site. KIER Construction kindly allowed a number of videos to be made so that students could grasp the use of Maths in the construction industry. Whilst this is a complex arithmetic problem, students who understand direct and inverse proportion normally solve this in around 7-8 minutes in class.