revengeoftheluddites wrote:
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.
That is why it is specifically mentioned that there is no loss of material, which is only possible if it is 3,4,5.