Question

A college is creating a new rectangular parking lot. the length is 0.14 mile longer than the width and the area of the parking lot is 0.048 square mile. find the length and width of the parking lot.

Answer 1

Answer:

The width is .16 miles and the length is .3 miles

Step-by-step explanation:

Use the area formula for a rectangle and the fact that the length = .14 + w.  Your formula will look like this then:

.048 = w(.14 + w)

Distribute through the parenthesis to get

$.048=.14w+w^2$

Get everything on one side of the equals sign and set the whole equal to 0:

$0=w^2+.14w-.048$

Let's multiply everything by 1000 to get rid of those decimals:

$0=1000w^2+140w-48$

Now we need to factor that to solve for w:

w = .16 and w = -.3

Since the two things in math that will never ever be negative are distance measures and time, we can safely disregard the -.3.  That means that the width is .16 and the length is ,16 + .14 which is .3.  There you go!