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2005 AMC 10A Problems/Problem 11

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Problem

A wooden cube n units on a side is painted red on all six faces and then cut into n^3 unit cubes. Exactly one-fourth of the total number of faces of the unit cubes are red. What is n?

\mathrm{(A) \ } 3\qquad \mathrm{(B) \ } 4\qquad \mathrm{(C) \ } 5\qquad \mathrm{(D) \ } 6\qquad \mathrm{(E) \ } 7

Solution

Since there are n^2 little faces on each face of the big wooden cube, there are 6n^2 little faces painted red.

Since each unit cube has 6 faces, there are 6n^3 little faces total.

Since one-fourth of the little faces are painted red,

\frac{6n^2}{6n^3}=\frac{1}{4}

\frac{1}{n}=\frac{1}{4}

n=4\Longrightarrow \mathrm{(B)}

See Also

Want to learn how to tackle those tough AMC/AIME/Olympiad algebra problems? Check out Art of Problem Solving's Intermediate Algebra by Richard Rusczyk and Mathew Crawford. Over 1600 problems!
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