Question

A plumber cut a pipe into 5 equal pieces and had 27 cm of the pipe left. For a second

pipe 15m long, he cut 11 pieces of the same length as that of each piece cut from the
first pipe and had 15 cm of the second pipe left. What was the length, in cm, of each
shorter piece of the second pipe? What was the length of the first pipe originally?
Please input your answer:

Answer 1

Explanation:

Let's call the length of each shorter piece of the first pipe x. Then the total length of the first pipe would be 5x + 27 cm.

Similarly, the length of each shorter piece of the second pipe would be x and the total length of the second pipe would be 11x + 15 cm.

Since both pipes were cut into the same length pieces, we can set the two equations equal to each other:

5x + 27 = 11x + 15

Solving for x, we can find the length of each shorter piece:

6x = -12

x = -2

This means that each shorter piece of both pipes was -2 cm long, which is not physically possible. So, this solution is not valid. This means that the problem is underdetermined and that we cannot determine the length of each piece.