SOLUTION: Jose has a board that is 44 inches long. He wishes to cut it into two pieces so that one piece will be 6 inches longer than the other. How long should the shorter piece be?

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Question 640883: Jose has a board that is 44 inches long. He wishes to cut it into two pieces so that one piece will be 6 inches longer than the other. How long should the shorter piece be?

Answer by solver91311(24713) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Let represent the length of the short piece. Then is the length of the longer piece. Let represent the width of the saw kerf (the overall thickness of the saw blade including the set of the teeth, i.e. measure of the length of the wood that becomes sawdust). There are 12 inches in a foot.

But since you aren't ever sure exactly where the saw is going to be placed (unless you ARE Jose and you are doing the sawing yourself), you can estimate with reasonable certainty that the actual measure of the shorter board () is in the range of

John

My calculator said it, I believe it, that settles it