SOLUTION: A rectangular flower garden is 8ft longer thant it is wide. It is surrounded by a brick walk 2ft wide. The area is 176ft^2. Find the dimensions. I know that the equation is set

Question 389660: A rectangular flower garden is 8ft longer thant it is wide. It is surrounded by a brick walk 2ft wide. The area is 176ft^2. Find the dimensions.
I know that the equation is set = to 176 and that width = x and length = x+8 but I am missing what to do with the brick walk 2ft wide. Having problems setting problem up to solve. Would appreciate help!!!
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let x = width of the garden. So because the "garden is 8ft longer thant it is wide", we know that the length of the garden is

If you draw the picture, you should get

Note: we're adding 2 ft to each dimension twice because there are two red sides per dimension.

Edit: I'm assuming that the area of the brick ONLY is 176 square feet.

So we can see that the dimensions of the entire rectangle are x+4 by x+12. So the area of the entire thing is

Because the area of the garden only is , this means that the area of the brick ONLY is

Note: I'm subtracting the area of the garden from the area of the entire enclosure.

Start with the given equation.

FOIL

Distribute.

Combine like terms.

Subtract from both sides.

Combine like terms on the right side.

Divide both sides by to isolate .

Reduce.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Answer:

So the solution is

This means that the width of the garden is 16 feet.

Now plug this into to get

So the length of the garden is 24 feet.

So the garden alone is 16 x 24 ft

If you need more help, email me at jim_thompson5910@hotmail.com

Also, feel free to check out my tutoring website

Jim
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