Jose needs a 5/8 meter length of copper pipe to complete a project. Which of the following lengths of pipe can be cut to the required length with the least length of pipe left over? 9/16 meter. 3/5 meter. 3/4 meter. 4/5 meter. 5/6 meter.

1 Answer
Feb 20, 2018

3/4 meters.

Explanation:

The easiest way to solve them is to make them all share a common denominator. I'm not going to get into the details of how to do that, but it is going to be
16*5*3=240.
Converting them all into a "240 denominator", we get:

150/240,

And we have:
135/240,144/240,180/240,192/240,200/240.

Given that we can't use a copper pipe that is shorter than the amount we want, we can remove 9/16 (or 135/240) and 3/5 (or 144/240). The answer will then obviously be 180/240 or 3/4 meters of pipe.