
Originally Posted by
cjmcdougall
Hi,
I have come up against a question in a past paper I am revising for a maths exam next week and I am having some difficulty.
The question is:
A concrete path with uniform width x metres is to be built around the rectangular base of a house of length 61 metres and width 35 metres. The area of the path is 400m^2. Set up a quadratic equation in x and solve it to give the width of the path.
So far I have:
(61+2x)(35+2x)-(61*35)=400
(2135+122x+70x+4x^2)-(2135)=400
192x+4x^2=400
192x+4x^2-400=0
48x+x^2-100=0