Question

21. A joiner is set to remove 7/64 in. from the width of an oak board. If the board was 4 5/8 in. wide, find its width after joining once.

Answer 1

The oak board had originally 4 5/8 in. wide, and the joiner wants to remove 7/64 in. from the width. This basically wants us to subtract 7/64 in. from 4 5/8 in.

To do this operation, we just need to put those two fractions with the same denominator and then subtract the numerators.

`4(5)/(8)=4+(5)/(8)=(4*8)/(8)+(5)/(8)=(32)/(8)+(5)/(8)=(37)/(8)`

If we multiply the width, both the numerator and denominator by 8, we're going to get the same denominator as the number we want to subtract.

`(37)/(8)*(8)/(8)=(296)/(64)`

Doing the subtraction:

`(296)/(64)-(7)/(64)=(289)/(64)=4+(33)/(64)=4(33)/(64)`

The width after joining once is 4 33/64 in.