Irene R. answered 02/18/20
Senior Mechanical Engineer with 13+ years of Teaching Experience
Let's use the variable w to represent the width of the rectangle.
Then the length can be represented by the following expression: (x + 6)
Since area is equal to length times width, we can write the following equation for the area:
A = length * width
135 = (w + 6) * w
Now we can solve for w after using the distributive property and factoring:
135 = (w + 6) * w
135 = w^2 + 6w
0 = w^2 + 6w - 135
This factors to:
0 = (w + 15) (w -9)
w = -15 OR w = 9
Since the width can not be a negative number, we can only use the solution of w = 9 meters
Then the length will be (w + 6) or 9 + 6 = 15 meters
So the length is 15 meters and the width is 9 meters.