Speed, Distance, Time in UCAT QR: The Triangle Method Done Right
QR gives you roughly 41 seconds per question. If you're still drawing the SDT triangle in the margin, you've already lost the question. Here's the faster way.
Speed, Distance, Time in UCAT QR: The Triangle Method Done Right
Quantitative Reasoning gives you 25 minutes for 36 questions. That’s roughly 41 seconds each, and a big chunk of those questions hinge on speed, distance, and time. If you’re still pencilling a tiny triangle in the margin every time you see “km/h” and “minutes” together, you’ve already burned ten seconds you don’t have.
The SDT triangle works. It’s also where most QR practice plateaus. The cover-up trick gets you the formula, but it doesn’t help when the units are mismatched, when the journey has three legs, or when the question is asking for average speed across stages of unequal length. Those are the questions the UCAT actually asks.
This is a walk-through of how to handle speed-distance-time problems at UCAT pace, including the unit conversion shortcut, the average-speed trap, multi-stage journeys, three worked examples, the graph-based traps that catch out otherwise strong candidates, and a 7-day drill to lock it in before test day.
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