Question

100 wire is cut into three pieces. The second piece is twice as long as the first piece. The third piece is one third as long as the first piece. How long is each piece

Answer 1

The pieces have lengths of 60 meters, 30 meters and 10 meters respectively

Here, we want to get the length of each piece of wire

Let us have the length of the first piece as x

The second piece is twice this, which is 2 * x = 2x

The third piece is one-third the length of the first;

That would be 1/3 * x = x/3

Adding all these, we get 100 meters

We have this as follows;

$\begin{gathered} x\text{ + 2x + }\frac{x}{3}\text{ = 100} \\ \\ \text{Multiply through by 3} \\ \\ 3x\text{ + 6x + x = 300} \\ 10x\text{ = 300} \\ x\text{ = }\frac{300}{10} \\ x\text{ = 30 meters} \\ \\ 2x\text{ = (2}\times30)\text{ = 60 meters} \\ \\ \frac{x}{3}\text{ = }\frac{30}{3}\text{ = 10 meters} \end{gathered}$