Problema Solution

The printed matter on a 10 by 16 centimeter page of a book must cover 0 square centimeters. If all margins are to be the same width, how wide should they be?

Answer provided by our tutors

This is a somewhat surprising question, because it seems a little strange that the printed matter should cover 0 square centimeters. However, given the information in the question, this would mean that the entire page must be margins.


Looking at the width of the page, which is 10 centimeters, the left and right margins must each be 5 centimeters, so that together they take up the entire width of the page.


Now, given that all margins must be the same width, we would have to set the top and bottom margins at 5 centimeters also. While this would seem to leave a vertical area of 6 centimeters in the middle of the page, this will not actually leave any space for printed matter, because it has no width because of the left and right margins.


Therefore, all four margins should be 5 centimeters wide.