Question

To make 160 using the given pole sizes (72, 60, 48, 36, 30, 24, 18), what is the least number of poles you could use?

a) 2
b) 3
c) 4
d) 5

Answer 1

To make 160 using the given pole sizes, the least number of poles you could use is 3, by combining one each of the 72, 60, and 30 poles.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the least number of poles that can be used to make a combined length of 160 from the given sizes (72, 60, 48, 36, 30, 24, 18), we need to find a combination of these lengths that adds up to 160 while using as few poles as possible. We should start with the largest pole and work our way down.

Using the largest pole of length 72, we can see that two of these would give us 144, which is short of 160 by 16. None of the available pole sizes is 16, so we cannot just use two poles. If we look at the next largest pole, which is 60, we can add it to one of the 72 poles to get 132, again short of 160. However, now we can add a 30 pole to get exactly 160. This requires three poles (one 72, one 60, and one 30), which is the smallest number that can be used to get to 160 using the given pole sizes.