A football team lost 9 yards on first down and 4 yards on second down. It gained 5 yards on third down. How many yards does it n
2 answers:
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Find the powers
$a^{2}=5+2 \sqrt{6}$
$a^{3}=11 \sqrt{2}+9 \sqrt{3}$
The cubic term gives us a clue, we can use a linear combination to eliminate the root 3 term $a^{3}-9 a=2 \sqrt{2}$ Square $\left(a^{3}-9 a\right)^{2}=8$ which gives one solution. Expand we have $a^{6}-18 a^{4}-81 a^{2}=8$ Hence the polynomial $x^{6}-18 x^{4}-81 x^{2}-8$ will have a as a solution.
Note this is not the simplest solution as $x^{6}-18 x^{4}-81 x^{2}-8=\left(x^{2}-8\right)\left(x^{4}-10 x^{2}+1\right)$
so fits with the other answers.