You have 8 dimes and 4 nickels you make a box out of the dimes with each outer side equal 30 cents you need to stack the nickels on top of the dimes but each outer side still needs to equal 30 cents?

Answer 1

If I understand the question properly, the trick is to put the nickels on the corners. The first layer of your "box" will be all dimes, arranged like so:

-00-

0--0

0--0

-00-

(the -'s represent empty space and the 0's represent dimes)

Let us give the dimes letters to identify them:

-AB-

C--D

E--F

-GH-

Now, you want to put your four nickels on the corners, so you would place one on top of A and C, one on top of B and D, one on top of E and G, and one on top of F and H. This would look roughly like:

XABX

C--D

E--F

XGHX

where the X's represent nickels. Since they are bigger than the dimes, they actually would be on top of the dimes, not on the same level.

Now, every side has 30 cents, because we can count each nickel twice, as it is on the corner.