In the "Mashburn" pharmaceutical company there are

[BTGmoderatorDC]

In the "Mashburn" pharmaceutical company there are two machines - a machine that produces blue pills and a machine that produces red pills. The machines are operated 10 hours a day, and the daily quota of the "blue" machine is 20% greater than that of the red machine. "¨If the "blue" machine was switched on at 8:00 and the "red" machine at 10:45, at what time will half of the combined daily quota be manufactured?

A. 13:15
B. 14:15
C. 14:30
D. 15:40
E. 19:15

OA B

Source: Economist GMAT

[Scott@TargetTestPrep]

In the "Mashburn" pharmaceutical company there are two machines - a machine that produces blue pills and a machine that produces red pills. The machines are operated 10 hours a day, and the daily quota of the "blue" machine is 20% greater than that of the red machine. "¨If the "blue" machine was switched on at 8:00 and the "red" machine at 10:45, at what time will half of the combined daily quota be manufactured?

A. 13:15
B. 14:15
C. 14:30
D. 15:40
E. 19:15

Let the daily quota for the red machine be 100 pills, so the daily quota for the blue machine is 120 pills. Thus, the combined daily quota is 220 pills.

Since each machine is operated 10 hours a day, the rate of the red machine is 10 pills per hour and the rate of the blue machine is 12 pills per hour. So their combined rate is 22 pills per hour. Therefore, they need to produce a total of 110 pills to satisfy half of the combined daily quota. However, since the blue machine has worked 2 hour 45 minutes before the red machine does, the blue machine has produced 2.75 x 12 = 33 pills. Therefore, when they work together starting at 10:45, they need to produce only 110 - 33 = 77 pills. We can create the following equation where t = the number of hours they work together to produce 77 pills:

22t = 77

t = 77/22 = 7/2 = 3.5

So they will produce half of the combined daily quota by 10:45 + 3.5 hours = 10:45 + 3:30 = 14:15.

Answer: B