The area of a rectangle is 12 square inches. The length is 5 more than twice it’s width. How do you find the length and width?
1 Answer
Using the positive root in the quadratic equation, you find that
Explanation:
We know two equations from the problem statement. First is that the area of the rectangle is 12:
where
Now, we substitute the length to width relationship into the area equation:
If we expand the left-hand equation, and subtract 12 from both sides, we have the makings of a quadratic equation:
where:
plug that into the quadratic equation:
we know that the width must be a positive number, so we only worry about the positive root:
now that we know the width (