SOLUTION: The Bin Laden's Living room is 12 by 16 feet, and he want to carpet it, except for a border of uniform width. What dimension should the carpet be if he can afford only 108 square f

Click here to see ALL problems on Equations

Question 659209: The Bin Laden's Living room is 12 by 16 feet, and he want to carpet it, except for a border of uniform width. What dimension should the carpet be if he can afford only 108 square ft?
Answer by Alan3354(69443) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The Bin Laden's Living room is 12 by 16 feet, and he want to carpet it, except for a border of uniform width. What dimension should the carpet be if he can afford only 108 square ft?
---------------
x = border width
Area = L*W

Solved by pluggable solver: SOLVE quadratic equation (work shown, graph etc)

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=448 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .

Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 24.5830052442584, 3.41699475574164. Here's your graph:

===================
Use x2 =~ 3.417 feet
Dim's = 12-x by 16-x