Working alone at their respective constant rate, Audery can complete a certain job in 4 hours, while Ferris can do the same job in 3 hours. Audery and Ferris worked together on the job and completed it in 2 hours, but while Audery worked this entire time, Ferris worked for some of the time and took 3 breaks of equal length. How many minutes long was each of Ferris's breaks ?
I started with their combined work rate
$1/4 +1/3 = 7/12$
So they can SHOULD be done with the job in $12/7 = 1.71\,hours$
As they did it in 2 hours, Ferris's combined "Recess" time = $2-1.71 = .28 \,hour$
He did it 3 times, so each of them is $0.285/3=.095 \,hours \,, \,or \,5.71 \,minutes$
But answer is 10 minutes. What gives ?
In two hours nonstop, Audrey will complete half the job. That means Ferris did half a job too. At his rate, it takes 1.5 hours, leaving half an hour which he took off.
Divide this evenly by three, to obtain break lengths of ten (10) minutes.