All about flooble | fun stuff | Get a free chatterbox | Free JavaScript | Avatars    
perplexus dot info

Home > General
Tin Can Company (Posted on 2004-11-12) Difficulty: 3 of 5
The Dumbells Soup Company makes its own cylindrical tin cans. The cans have a diameter of 3 inches and they are 3.5 inches tall.

Dumbells produces the cans by cutting out circles and rectangles from a large sheet of tin. The "wasted tin" between circles and rectangles that they cut out is thrown away. The company can order sheets of arbitrary length, but they are always 6 feet wide.

The operations manager just received an order for 100 cans. He should order the shortest length sheet of tin he can, because he is tasked with minimizing the wasted tin.

What length should the manager order?

No Solution Yet Submitted by SilverKnight    
Rating: 2.7500 (4 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Question What sized rectangles? | Comment 3 of 11 |
(In reply to What are we buying again? by Jer)

The problem statement says they cut out "circles and rectangles". My natural assumption at first was they would cut 200 circles of diameter 3" for the tops and bottoms, and 100 rectangles of dimensions 3.5" x 3*pi" for the height of the cylinder. However, given that the problem never specifies that to be the case, I wonder if it were not possible just to cut out all the necessary circles, then cut out infinitely small rectangles from the "wasted tin"  and piece them together to get the appropriate sized rectangles, thereby wasting no tin.


  Posted by Avin on 2004-11-12 14:50:23
Please log in:
Login:
Password:
Remember me:
Sign up! | Forgot password


Search:
Search body:
Forums (0)
Newest Problems
Random Problem
FAQ | About This Site
Site Statistics
New Comments (8)
Unsolved Problems
Top Rated Problems
This month's top
Most Commented On

Chatterbox:
Copyright © 2002 - 2024 by Animus Pactum Consulting. All rights reserved. Privacy Information