a carpenter has several boards of equal
length. he cuts 3/5 of each board . after cutting the boards the carpenter notices that he has enough pieces left over to make 4 of the original boards. how many boards did the carpenter start with
To solve this problem, let's denote the number of boards the carpenter started with as "x".
According to the problem, the carpenter cuts 3/5 of each board. Therefore, after cutting, each board will be left with 2/5 of its original length.
Now, we are told that the remaining pieces are enough to make 4 of the original boards. This means that the total length of the remaining pieces is equal to the length of 4 original boards.
Since each original board is cut to 2/5 of its original length, the total length of the remaining pieces can be calculated as (2/5) * x.
We can set up the following equation to represent the given information:
(2/5) * x = 4
To solve for x, we can multiply both sides of the equation by 5/2:
x = 4 * (5/2)
x = 10
Therefore, the carpenter started with 10 boards.