Monday, February 8, 2010

Shopping Carts February 2010


Mathematics appears in unusual places. When grocery stores are designed, an architect must calculate the space needed for storage of the shopping carts. The cart above is 39” long, 22” wide and has a nesting distance of 13.5”. Nesting distance is how much extra length a cart takes when the carts are stacked together. One cart takes up a 39” length and 2 carts take up 52.5” length. Write a length formula that would compute how much length to allow for storing the carts. Assume that there are 5 rows (nests) of carts.