Difficulty: Rating: GCSE Marks:

GCSE Text:
The journey from a guest car park to a theme park entrance is 1.1km, so moving walkways have been installed in the floor to assist guests. The moving walkways are 120 metres long and there are 5 of them positioned end to end.  The moving walkway travels at a speed of 3km/hr and an average person walks at a speed of 5km/hr.

a)  If guests stand on all 5 moving walkways, how much time will it take them to travel the full distance?

b)  How much shorter would the journey time be if the guests walked on the walkways instead of just standing on them? Give your answer in minutes and whole seconds.

Suggestions:
This has proved to be an excellent question to encourage students to practise visualising/sketching a question to try to solve it. There is a large amount of information (as is common with GCSE questions) and students will need to break the problem into manageable sections. It is also worth stressing that a question like this earns marks for workings even if unfinished, so struggling students should still complete part of the answer if not all of it. Students often take 4-5 minutes to answer this question, and care will need to be taken regarding units of the numbers provided.

Teachers could extend the learning by considering:

• Pierre parks his car at 9.50am. He parks his car towards the front of the car park so only has a distance of 740m to travel, and has two walkways between him and the entrance.  Pierre’s walking speed is 4km/hr. If he walks on the walkways will he arrive at the theme park entrance by 10:00am? Show all workings.