SOLUTION: Joy wants to buy carpet for a room that is 19 ft wide and 26 ft. long. She wants to leave a uniform strip of flooring around the carpet. She can afford to purchase 198 sq. ft. of c

Question 974949: Joy wants to buy carpet for a room that is 19 ft wide and 26 ft. long. She wants to leave a uniform strip of flooring around the carpet. She can afford to purchase 198 sq. ft. of carpet. What should the dimensions of the carpet be?
Found 2 solutions by Boreal, josgarithmetic:
Answer by Boreal(15235) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The carpet has to be (19-x)(26-x)-198 sq ft; x=feet of uniform flooring strip
494-45x+x^2=198
x^2-45x+296=0
(x-37)(x-8)=0
x=37,8; x=37 is not possible
x=8 feet of flooring ANSWER
check 11 *18=198 sq ft.
Answer by josgarithmetic(39617) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
w, width of room
L, length of room
u, uniform width around carpet
A, area of carpet-
-
w=19
L=26
u, UNKNOWN
A=198
-
Finding u will allow for finding dimensions of the carpet

, the area of the uniform strip between walls and carpet
, the dimensions of the carpet arranged to express carpet's area A.

Doing the substitutions now might be much more comfortable...

Try the general solution for a quadratic equation to solve for u.

or
Obviously only u=4 makes sense.

---------------------------
Rug width, 11
Rug length, 18
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