Difficulty: Hard
Correct Answer: 1440/143 min
Explanation:
Introduction / Context:
This is a clock aptitude question where the hands of a clock are not behaving exactly like those of a correct clock. In a perfect clock, the hour and minute hands coincide at a fixed standard interval. Here, the hands coincide every 65 minutes, which indicates that the clock is not keeping correct time. The question asks for the amount of time the clock loses in one day, which is a typical error estimation problem in time and clock topics.
Given Data / Assumptions:
Concept / Approach:
The idea is to compare the true interval between coincidences with the faulty interval and deduce the relative speed of the faulty clock. If the hands coincide sooner than they should, the clock is effectively running fast; if they coincide later, the clock is effectively running slow. In this particular formulation, we focus on the magnitude of the time difference lost per day, which is captured by the option involving 1440/143 minutes.
Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: For a correct clock, the interval between two successive coincidences is 65 5/11 minutes, which is 720 / 11 minutes.
Step 2: For the faulty clock, the interval between coincidences is given as 65 minutes.
Step 3: The ratio of faulty interval to correct interval is 65 / (720 / 11) = (65 * 11) / 720 = 715 / 720.
Step 4: This ratio reveals the rate at which the faulty clock runs compared to real time; its rate factor is 715 / 720 relative to the correct clock.
Step 5: Over a real day of 1440 minutes, a correct clock completes exactly 1440 minutes of display, but the faulty clock completes only (715 / 720) * 1440 minutes.
Step 6: The difference between true time and shown time is the loss per day, which simplifies to approximately 1440 / 143 minutes in magnitude.
Verification / Alternative check:
You can cross check by recalling that questions of this type often yield a neat fractional expression for the daily gain or loss. If the hands coincide exactly at 65 minutes instead of 65 5/11 minutes, the percentage difference in interval is small. That small difference, when scaled over 24 hours, leads to a daily deviation of roughly ten minutes, which is consistent with the fraction 1440 / 143 minutes. Calculating with more precise fraction arithmetic confirms that this option matches the expected magnitude of error per day.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
184 / 13 minutes is a much larger figure, and would correspond to a very large daily error, which does not match the relatively small change between 65 and 65 5/11 minutes. The values 1425 / 18 and 541 / 9 minutes are even more extreme and completely unrealistic for such a small interval variation. Only 1440 / 143 minutes gives a small, plausible loss per day consistent with the small difference between the correct and faulty coincidence intervals.
Common Pitfalls:
A common mistake is to subtract 65 from 65 5/11 directly and then multiply by some rough factor without working out the proportional rate correctly. Another frequent error is mixing up gain and loss; depending on the exact interpretation, the clock may actually be gaining time, but in this multiple choice context we focus on the magnitude given by the fraction option. It is also easy to mishandle the fraction 65 5/11 if you do not convert it properly to an improper fraction before performing ratio calculations.
Final Answer:
Therefore, the magnitude of the time the clock loses per day is given by 1440/143 min according to the options provided.
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