Classic word problem – Chap. 5, Act 4, Strip 14

In her defense Mopey could claim that she only did it to stay true to the cartoony roots of the handcar stunt. In the toons, a handcar will always end up being chased by a much faster train, forcing the user to crank at an isane speed to try and avoid a crash. That will only work, however, if it’s the end of the toon, in which case the train will chase the handcar off towards the horizon. In all other cases, it will work only temporarily – and in most of them, the guy on the handcar will end up desperately clinging to the front end of the train, like Biff does here. So Mopey can always say Biff should have expected it all, and she was just trying not to dissappoint him.

Good thing that the Professor didn’t give up on insisting on an answer from Mopey, finally even employing the bighead trick he learned from his good friend Soun Tendo in Tokyo. The thing is, the Professor knows that Mopey has a keen understanding of right and wrong – so if she’s acting evasively, it can only mean she knows she’s doing something very, very wrong. In that sense, her sense of right and wrong is quite reliable, it’s a real shame she never lets it influence her behaviour in any other way. ._.

And in case you’re interested, here’s the word problem version:
Biff leaves the Natal Railways station at 16:19, going at 8 mph down the track to Bloemfontein. The rest of the team spend more than an hour modifying the armoured car, and leave the station at 17:38 down the same track, going 25 mph. Biff spotted the armoured car when it was 2 miles behind him, and decelerated to 3 mph. When the armoured car had approached to a distance of half a mile without showing signs of slowing down, he panicked and accelerated to 15 mph. At the same moment, Mopey accelerated to 28 mph, the armoured car’s top speed. How far away from the station did the armoured car collide with the handcar?

More on Thursday.

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