Question

There are four volume of “Humor in Accounting” sitting on a bookshelf. Each book is exactly eight centimeters thick. The pages of each book constitute seven centimeters and the covers are each half a centimeter thick. A starving beetle starts eating at page one of volume one and eats straight through to the last page of volume four. How far does the beetle travel?

Answer 1

The beetle ate everything except the front cover of volume one and the back cover of volume four.
The thickness of the front cover of volume one and the back cover of volume four = 0.5 cm + 0.5 cm = 1 cm.
Total distance covered by the books = 4 x 8cm = 32 cm.
Therefore, total distance travelled by the beetle is 32 - 1 = 31 cm.