Question

A piece of lumber is 17 feet long, You cut the lumber into logs that are 18 inches long, how many 18 inch logs do you cut from the lumber?, how many inches of the lumber are remaining?

Answer 1

Multiplication and distributive property are your friends for this problen

Answer 2

Before doing anything, we must convert the unit of feet into the unit of inches so that all the units match. You cannot multiply apples by oranges!

Since 1 ft = 12 inches, then a 17 foot piece of lumber is 204 inches long.

12(17) = 204

Now, we can write an equation.

Let x = the amount of logs that can be cut from the lumber

204 = x(18)

204/18 = x(18)/18

x = 11.333333.....

You do not want .333333.... of a log, so you can cut 11 logs max.

You will then have that .333333333.... inches of lumber left.