Problem of the Week: Star Wars

Happy Monday, and a good May the 4th to any Star Wars fans in our audience! I discovered this problem while browsing the internet a few months ago, and I'm glad some simple googling led me to find it again. While this is not a particularly challenging Problem of the Week for our more advanced college and beyond followers, it's still a fun review of algebra!

I've transcribed the word problem that I found in this article. Isn't it great that such a young math student created this problem? I posted it on our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages, and I've included my solution below.

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 This word problem is just that: wordy. Beneath the Star Wars jargon is an algebra problem similar to one you could find in the SAT math section, or on an algebra test. See my solution below...

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I created equations for what I knew first. I knew that the speeders would cost the initial plus the daily rate in imperial credits, and the same went for the bounty hunters. Then, I just set the equations equal to each other to find how many days it will take to make the costs equal.

We'll be back next week with a calculus based problem- this one was fun, but I know many of our followers crave more difficult math challenges. So stay tuned!

Does anyone have another math problem based on the Star Wars world? Is anyone else extremely excited to see the cross-guarded lightsaber from the trailers in action? Let us know in the comments!

-Tori