If a radar tracks an aircraft 30 times in one minute, what percentage of the time is it tracking?

To determine the percentage of time the radar is actively tracking the aircraft, it’s important to understand how frequently the radar is making these tracking instances in relation to the total potential tracking opportunities within that minute.

The radar tracks the aircraft 30 times in one minute, which is equivalent to 60 seconds. If we consider that the radar could theoretically track once every second, it would complete 60 tracking instances in one minute (60 seconds). Therefore, to find the percentage of time the radar is tracking, we calculate how many tracking instances it performs compared to the total possible instances.

In this case:

• 30 tracking instances (actual) out of 60 possible instances (total) leads to the equation:

[ \text{Percentage} = \left( \frac{30}{60} \right) \times 100 ]

This simplifies to:

[ \text{Percentage} = 0.5 \times 100 = 50% ]

Hence, the radar tracks the aircraft 50% of the time since it successfully records 30 tracking instances out of a possible 60 in that one-minute timeframe. The correct choice reflects this calculation accurately, confirming that the radar is indeed tracking half of the time within that minute.