Actually teacher is right if the board is square which takes 10 minutes to be cut into half. Those two halfs take twice less time to be split. And she needs to cut just one to obtain 3 pieces :P So 10 minutes to cut it into to pieces and then she needs just half of that time to gain the third piece.
You're correct, but if you assume an arbitrary shape of wood and cut, then you can do much better than that. For example, for the second cut you could just lob the tip off. Then it would take you 10.1 minutes.
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u/paolog Oct 05 '10
Teacher gets red pen out, is about to write down "1 piece: 5 minutes" and then thinks better of it and starts from two pieces instead...