Sixty-four cubes of sides 2 cm each are combined to form a cube of side 8 cm. If four of the smaller cubes along the diagonal of a surface are removed from the surface of the large cube, which one of the following statements about the surface area of this
The large cube initially has a surface area of 6 × (8 cm)^2 = 384 cm^2. Removing less surface area by taking out the smaller cubes along the diagonal reduces the surface area below the initial 384 cm^2.