You can put this solution on YOUR website! Given:
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Note that (b - c) is a factor that is common to the two terms you were given. Therefore,
it can be factored out of each term to give:
. <=== remember this step. We'll come back to it.
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Notice that the factor is the difference of two squares. It is of the
form which can use the factoring rule for the difference of two
squares. This factoring rule says:
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If you multiply out the right side of this rule, you will see that the product does equal
the left side. And by comparing this rule with the problem that we are working on, you
can see that x = a and y = 4b. So by substituting "a" for x and "4b" for y in the rule
you get that
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Take the right side of this rule and substitute it for in the expression
above that we wanted to remember. When you do that substitution you get:
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That's as far as we can go with the factoring. So the answer to the problem is:
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Hope that this helps you to understand the problem a little more and especially helps you
to use the factoring rule for the difference of two squares ... it turns out that this
is a fairly good rule to remember because it can be used quite often in factoring
problems.
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