In a 8½x11 sheet of paper I drew two equal non-overlapping circles -- both completely inside the paper, of course.

What's the largest portion of the paper I could cover with the circles?

What would be the answer if I drew THREE equal circles?

After I posted, I read the other posts before me... everyone got the "answer" but didn't actually answer the question :)

Federico asks for the portion (area) of the paper that is covered by the circles you found.  In short, the answers are:

So the largest portion of the paper you could cover with two circles of radius 2.91 is
A = 2*pi*R^2 = 53.30 in^2
This is about 57% of the paper.

And the largest portion of the paper you could cover with three circles of radius 2.41 is
A = 3*pi*r^2 = 54.58 in^2
This is about 58.37% of the paper.

In "long," read my previous post.

Posted by nikki on 2004-10-21 18:06:51