The case of the Wire Mesh....

[tim_l_012]

OK. I had maths today, and I got an answer out of the back of the book, 'cause I couldn't figure it out.
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Wire mesh contains 10cm by 10cm holes and is to be 1M in width.
How much wire is required to make a 10m length of the mesh

I got 211m...... (out of the book )

?????????

What have I done, or what has the book done?

Well Done to anyone who can get this...

[MartinSmith]

Well (try drawing it) you will need 11 pieces of wire horizontally of 10m length and 101 vertically of 1m height.

(11*10) + (101*1) = 211

[chenko]

give us a harder one

[Jim Brown]

Martin's right of course: you probably forgot the 11th and the 101st wires to close the rectangle. I've seen this error referred to as a 'fence-post error' for obvious reasons: you need one more pole (or strand of wire) than you have panels. Believe it or not, it was in a VB text (VB6 From the Ground Up, I think) that I saw it called thusly.