Final answer:
The wooden dowel is cut into two pieces where the shorter piece is 12 cm and the longer piece is 60 cm, with the longer piece being 5 times the length of the shorter.
Step-by-step explanation:
A carpenter has a wooden dowel that is 72 cm long and needs to cut it into two pieces so that one piece is 5 times as long as the other.
To solve this, let's denote the shorter piece as x cm. This means the longer piece would then be 5x cm. Together, the two pieces add up to the original length of the dowel: x + 5x = 72 cm. This simplifies to 6x = 72 cm, and solving for x gives us x = 72 cm / 6 = 12 cm.
Therefore, the shorter piece is 12 cm, and the longer piece is 5 × 12 cm = 60 cm.