Question

A company sells boxes that are 2 3/8 feet high, 3 5/8 feet long and 1 7/8 feet wide. John has a storage room that is 8 feet wide, 10 feet deep, and 12 feet high. You may rotate the boxes so that the width and length are interchanged, but the boxes may not be laid on their sides. What is the maximum number of boxes that he may stack on top of one another?

Answer 1

The maximum number of boxes that may be stacked on top of one another is 5 boxes. Note that the questions asks how many boxes can be stacked ON TOP of one another, not how many can fit in the storage room. Further, the boxes cannot be manipulated to change their height. Thus, to find the answer we only need 2 of the measurements given: the height of the boxes and the height of the storage unit. The height of the box is 2 3/8 feet, which can be written as 2.375 feet. The height of the storage unit is 12 feet. Simply dividing the height of the storage unit by the height of the boxes give us: 12/2.375=5.052631... Thus the maximum number of number of boxes that can be stacked is 5.