Acme Products makes a very expensive pencil sharpener. Each sharper is carefully placed in a box that measures 4cm by 6 cm by 10 cm

Question

Acme Products makes a very expensive pencil sharpener. Each sharper is carefully placed in a box that measures 4cm by 6 cm by 10 cm. To ship these items overseas Acme purchases special shipping containers that measure 80cm by 60 cm by 40 cm [they are guaranteed not to crush the delicate pencil sharpeners].

If the company makes 160,000 pencil sharpeners each year, how many of these special shipping containers should they purchase in order to be able to ship their product for the next 3 years?

Answer 1

Lets first get the volume of one pencil sharpener: 4 cm x 6 cm x 10 cm = 240 cm³

Now lets get the volume of one special shipping container: 80 cm x 60 cm x 40 cm = 192,000 cm³

Now lets determine how many pencil sharpeners can fit into one container: 192,000/240 = 800 pencil sharpeners.

Since the company will ship 160,000 pencil sharpeners each year, they will ship 160,000 * 3 = 480,000 pencil sharpeners in 3 years. In order to determine how many special containers we need, we do the following:

480,000 / 800 = 600 shipping containers