SOLUTION: The area of a rectangular field is 428 square meters and the width is 10m less than the length. What is the size of the width?

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Question 953749: The area of a rectangular field is 428 square meters and the width is 10m less than the length. What is the size of the width?
Answer by macston(5194)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
L=length; W=width=L-10m; A=area=L*W

Substitute for W

Subtract 428m^2 from each side
Solved by pluggable solver: SOLVE quadratic equation with variable
Quadratic equation (in our case ) has the following solutons:



For these solutions to exist, the discriminant should not be a negative number.

First, we need to compute the discriminant : .

Discriminant d=1812 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .




Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 26.2837966537928, -16.2837966537928. Here's your graph:

The length is 26.28 meters.
ANSWER: The width is 16.28 meters.
CHECK:


Discrepancy from rounding.
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