Question

The surface area for a rectangular prism is given by the formula SA = 2ab + 2bc + 2ac, where a, b, and c are the lengths of the prism. If the surface area of a rectangular prism with side c measuring 12 meters is 434 square meters and length of side a measuring the same length as side b, then what is the length of side a of the rectangular prism?

Answer 1

Answer:

We are given

We are also given  and , which allows us to rewrite the equation as

(I substituted every "b" with "a" and every "c" with "9").

The solutions to this quadratic equation are -25 and 7. We discard -25 because a side with negative length would make no sense.