SOLUTION: Each side of a square is increased 6 inches. When this happens, the area is multiplied by 25. How many inches in the side of the original square?

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Question 964085: Each side of a square is increased 6 inches. When this happens, the area is multiplied by 25. How many inches in the side of the original square?
Answer by macston(5194)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
s=original side

Subtract 25s^2 from each side.
Divide each side by -12.
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=25 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .




Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 1.5, -1. Here's your graph:

So s=1.5 inches.
ANSWER: The sides of the original square were 1.5 inches.
CHECK:
Original area=
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