James has a short drive to his garage which he wishes to pave with a single layer of bricks. If his square drive has side length 2m and James buys the bricks in stacks of 10 with each brick being 0.2m long and half as wide how many stacks must James buy?
There's a lot of information to take on in this question so it's firstly important to isolate the facts: -The drive needs to be paved with a single layer of bricks -The drive is a square with length of 2m -Each brick has length 0.2m and width 0.1m -Each stack has 10 bricks Notice how no information was given on the depth of the bricks - this is unimportant given only a single layer of bricks is needed. Surface area of the square drive = 22 = 4m2 Surface area of a single rectangular brick = 0.20.1 = 0.02m2 Number of bricks needed = 4/0.02 = 200 Number of stacks needed = 200/10 = 20
