A piece of yarn is $60$ cm long. The yarn is cut so that one piece is five times the length of the other piece. How many centimeters long is the shorter piece?
I need to find the length of the shorter piece of yarn, so I'll call that $x$ cm. Then the longer piece must be five times that, or $5x$ cm. The total length of the yarn is $60$ cm, so I can write an equation: $x + 5x = 60$. Simplifying, I get $6x = 60$, so $x = 10$. That means the shorter piece is $x = 10$ cm long. 