Question

Suppose that you need to build as many chairs as possible. Each chair requires one seat, one back, and four legs. If you have 12 seats, 15 backs, and 44 legs, which of the chair components limits the number of chairs you can make?.

Answer 1

legs limit the number of chairs that can be built

Explanation:

The maximum number of chairs that can be built will be the minimum of the number of parts divided by the number of parts needed for each chair, as computed across the different kinds of parts required.

seats: 12 available, used 1 per chair: 12/1 = 12 chairs possible

backs: 15 available, used 1 per chair: 15/1 = 15 chairs possible

legs: 44 available, used 4 per chair: 44/4 = 11 chairs possible

The maximum number of chairs that can be built will be the minimum of 12, 15, and 11. That is, 11 chairs can be built, limited by the number of available legs.