SOLUTION: A box is to be made from a sheet of cardboard 24 inches long and 18 inches wides by cutting squares from each corner and then folding be cut out of each corner if the bottom of the

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Question 939641: A box is to be made from a sheet of cardboard 24 inches long and 18 inches wides by cutting squares from each corner and then folding be cut out of each corner if the bottom of the box is to have an area of 265 square inches.
Answer by Alan3354(69443) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
A box is to be made from a sheet of cardboard 24 inches long and 18 inches wides by cutting squares from each corner and then folding be cut out of each corner if the bottom of the box is to have an area of 265 square inches.
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Cut squares x by x
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(24 - 2x)*(18 - 2x) = 265
4x^2 - 84x + 167 = 0

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=4384 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .

Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 18.7764726786234, 2.22352732137658. Here's your graph:

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x =~ 2.22 inches