The plates need to go on a tray to be fired in the kiln. The tray is 90cm x 40cm. Each plate has a radius of 8cm. There needs to be a 2cm gap around each plate. How many will fit on the tray?

Answer: 8 plates

Step-by-step explanation:

The dimension of the tray is 90cm x 40cm.

Each plate has a radius of 8cm. Diameter = 2 * radius

Therefore, the diameter of each plate is 2 * 8 = 16 cm

There needs to be a 2cm gap around each plate. This means that the total distance covered by each plate along the row and column of the tray would be 16 + 2 + 2 = 20 cm

Assuming the column of the tray is 90 cm, the number of plates that each column can occupy would be 90/20 = 4.5 = 4

the number of plates that each row can occupy would be 40/20 = 2

Therefore, the number of plates that can fit on the tray would be

4 * 2 = 8 plates