Question

A plumber wants to cut a piece of pipe 4 meters long into two pieces so that one piece is 2/3 as long as the other. Find the length of each piece.

Answer 1

To find the length of each piece of pipe, we can set up the following system of equations:

Let x be the length of the longer piece of pipe.
Then, the length of the shorter piece of pipe is 4-x.

We know that the longer piece of pipe is 2/3 as long as the shorter piece, so we can set up the following equation:

x = (2/3)(4-x)

Solving this equation for x, we find that x = 8/5.

Therefore, the longer piece of pipe is 8/5 meters long, and the shorter piece is 4-(8/5) = 12/5 meters long.