[TwoaDay]

In art class, students are taught how to shape a 1 ounce bag of clay into a small statue. During this process some of the clay remaines unused. For every five statues made there is enough extra clay to make one more statue. If a student has 25 ounces of clay what is the maximum number of statues he can sculpt?

31 statues. 25 ounces=25 sculptures+five more from the leftovers+one more from the leftovers of those five.

25+5+1=31(and one fifth left over)

What if he had 50 ounces?

[Guest]

that there is enough to make one more statue, which may or may not be one ounce. if the "process" is dropping a one ounce brick into a machine, then obviously I am wrong. However, during the sculpting, a frugal artist could reuse the clay dropping onto the table and, therefore, would only get six statues out of 5 ounces, not six and 1/5.

That said, I do understand that the gist of the puzzle was to catch someone not thinking about the leftover 5 "ounces" making 6 statues.

[TwoaDay]

the 1/5 left over is from the last statue that you made. you use the five leftover pieces to make one more but there is a leftover from that one too

[Guest]

1. 25+(25/5)+((25/5)/5) = 25+5+1 = 31

2. 50+(50/5)+((50/5)/5) = 50+10+2 = 62

[TwoaDay]

both are correct

who wants to figure out how many he could make with 125 ounces

(if you use the same method brhan usewd its pretty easy)

[Guest]

125 + 125/5 + (125/5)/5 + [(125/5)/5]/5 = 125 + 25 + 5 + 1 = 156

[TwoaDay]

good job

[bonanova]

25 + 5 + 1 = 31 with 1/5 ounce left over

50 + 10 + 2 = 62 with 2/5 ounces left over

[Brook]

125 + 125/5 + (125/5)/5 + [(125/5)/5]/5 = 125 + 25 + 5 + 1 =  156 is that correct 

?