Puzzle

Walls

Try out your thinking skillls -


Taken from the current edition of New Scientist magazine;

" My young nephew recently asked me to draw him a church. He gave me a sheet of A4 paper, and I began by drawing a square. I next added an isosceles triangle, using the whole of the top of the square as its base. To the whole of one side of the square I then added a rectangular nave. Of the three shapes, the rectangle occupied the largest area. The four different constituent dimensions where each a whole number of centimetres, these dimensions being the sides of each shape and the vertical height of the triangle. The areas of the three shapes added together produced a total which was perfectly divisible by each of the four dimensions. What were the overall length and overall height of my church?"

Pablo

i'll try this tomorrow (and i promise not to look at the answer if its been published since)

Cerberus

Would a church of 3cm in height and 3cm in length work?
Maybe I don't fully understand the question...
My church would have a 1 X 1 square, a 1X2 steeple and a 1X2 rectangle giving a total area of 1 + (1*2/1) + 2 = 4 which is divisible by the dimensions of all 3 and the rectangle has the largest area. This seems to satisfy all the conditions. But maybe I don't fully standunder the question. I presume its wrong cos it was so easy to do...
Why is there four constituent dimensions? Isn't there only 3? The side of the square, the other side of the rectangle and the height of the triangle?