The perimeter of a basketball court is 280 ft. The length is 42 ft longer than the width. What are the dimensions of the court?

1 Answer
Jul 10, 2016

The length is 91 ft. and the width is 49

Explanation:

We're going to solve this problem using system of equations. We will use variable l for length and w for width. Also it's fairly safe to assume that the basketball court is rectangular.

The formula for perimeter of a rectangle is 2l+2w=p. We know that the perimeter is 280 so our first equation will be 2l+2w=280.

Our second equation will come from "The length is 42 ft longer than the width". If we turn that sentence into a formula we can get l=42+w.

Now we can plug in our second equation into our first for l
2(42+w)+2w=280

Now we may simplify and solve for w.
84+2w+2w=280 84+4w=280 4w=196 w = 49

Now we plug in our width into our second equation
l=42+49
l=91

So our final answer will be the length is 91 ft. and the width is 49.