A construction company will produce identical metal supports in the shape of a right triangle with legs of length 3 feet and 4 feet. The three sides of each triangular support are to be constructed of metal stripping. If the company has a total of 6,000 feet of metal stripping and there is no waste of material in the construction of the supports, what is the greatest possible number of supports that the company can produce?

A. 428
B. 500
C. 545
D. 600
E. 1,000



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Sandy
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3,4,5 is the right angle triangle. So the number of 3,4,5 is the right angle triangles that can be formed from 6000 feet is 6000/12 = 500

I disagree with this one. If the legs of the table are 3 feet and 4 feet then the third side of the support would need to be screwed on as an attachment to the underside of the table. This means that the hypotenuse is 4 feet and the straight part of the table leg is 3 feet, and the missing section of the support is the square root of 16-9, which is the square root of 5. Therefore the answer would be 6000/(3+4+square root of 5). Without doing further calculations we know that the square root of 5 is between 2 and 3, so the answer is between 6000/9 and 6000/10 so it is between 600 and 666. None of the answers listed are correct. Otherwise the question needs to be rewritten to make clear that the 3 feet length is the base of the table, not the table leg itself.