Question

You want to place a towel bar that is 10 1⁄4 inches long in the center of a door that is 26 1⁄3 inches wide. How far should you place the bar from each edge of the door? (Write the answer as a mixed number.)

Answer 1

First we want to find the part of the door not covered by the towel bar.

So subtract 10.25 from 26.33

In order to do this we need common denominators

So we multiply the fractions to get

(26 & 4/12) - (10 & 3/12)

Now we subtract to get

15 & 1/12

Since the 15 is odd, add 12/12 to the fraction

14 & 13/12

Now divide that in half to get the distance from each edge

7 & 13/24