SOLUTION: This is from Activity Bank, INTEGRATED MATHEMATICS 1 Copyright by Houghton Mifflin Company. The world's largest industrial building is located in Hong Kong. The distance betwee

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Question 196131: This is from Activity Bank, INTEGRATED MATHEMATICS 1 Copyright by Houghton Mifflin Company.
The world's largest industrial building is located in Hong Kong. The distance between two opposite corners in the building is about 1320 ft. The length is about 55 ft. greater than the width. What are the length and the width of the building?
Answer by edjones(8007) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
There is a right angle triangle with hypotenuse 1320'.
a^2+b^2=c^2
a=b+55
(b+55)^2+b^2=1320^2
b^2+110b+3025+b^2=1742400
2b^2+110b-1739375=0
b=905'
a=960'
.
Ed
.

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=13927100 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .

Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 905.475749952806, -960.475749952806. Here's your graph: