A horse rider covers half the distance with speed. The remaining part of the distance was travelled with speed for half the time and with speed for other half of the time. The mean speed of the rider averaged over the whole time of motion is . The value of is:
JEE Physics 2023 Question with Solution
Answer
Correct answer:50
Step-by-step solution
Standard Method
Given: The rider covers the first half of the total distance with speed . In the remaining half, he moves at for half of that interval of time and at for the other half.
Find: The value of if the average speed over the whole journey is .

Let and . So the total distance is
For the first half,
For motion along , let the total time be . Since the rider moves for equal time intervals at and , the distances covered are
Hence,
So,
Therefore, total time of motion is
Average speed over the whole journey is
Now simplify:
Thus,
Given that average speed is , we get
Hence,
Therefore, the required value is .
Use average speed on equal-time segment
Given: The second half of the distance is covered using speeds and for equal times.
Find: The overall average speed.
For equal time intervals, the average speed on that part is the arithmetic mean:
So the rider covers the second half distance with effective speed .
Thus the times for the two halves are
Total distance is , so average speed is
Comparing with gives
Therefore, the correct answer is .
Common mistakes
Using the arithmetic mean for the whole trip is incorrect because the rider does not spend equal time or equal distance in all three speed intervals. Always compute average speed as total distance divided by total time.
Assuming the second half of the distance is covered equally in distance at and is wrong. The question states equal time, so the distances in those two parts are different.
Taking the total time for the second half as is incorrect because that formula would apply if distance were covered separately at both speeds. Here the total second-half distance is split according to equal time intervals, not repeated twice.
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