I assume there are some plus signs that aren't rendering for some reason, so that the plane should be

.
You're minimizing

subject to the constraint

. Note that

and

attain their extrema at the same values of

, so we'll be working with the squared distance to avoid working out some slightly more complicated partial derivatives later.
The Lagrangian is

Take your partial derivatives and set them equal to 0:

Adding the first three equations together yields

and plugging this into the first three equations, you find a critical point at

.
The squared distance is then

, which means the shortest distance must be

.
8 x - 4 (5 - x) = -44
mutiply the bracket by -4
(-4)(5) = -20
(-4)(-x)= 4x
8x-20+4x= -44
8x+4x-20= -44 ( combine like terms )
12x-20= -44
move -20 to the other side
sign changes from -20 to +20
12x-20+20= -44+20
12x= -44+20
12x= -24
divide both sides by 12
12x/12= -24/12
Answer: x= -2
Answer:
C
Step-by-step explanation: