A rectangular cemetery has an area of 266 square meters. Find the cemetery's dimensions if the length is 18 m less than 8 times its width.

Question

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Answer 1

The cemetery's dimensions are 14 meters by 19 meters. The area of the cemetery is 266 square meters, and we can set up the equation:

length x width = area

Let's use "w" to represent the width of the cemetery. We know that the length is 18 meters less than 8 times the width, so we can write:

length = 8w - 18

Now we can substitute this expression for length into the equation for area:

(8w - 18) x w = 266

Expanding this equation gives us a quadratic equation:

8w^2 - 18w - 266 = 0

We can solve for w using the quadratic formula:

w = (-b ± sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / 2a

Plugging in the values from our quadratic equation, we get:

w = (18 ± sqrt(18^2 + 4(8)(266))) / 2(8)

Simplifying this gives us two possible solutions for the width: w = 7 or w = -19/4. Since we can't have a negative width, we'll use the positive value of w, which is 7.

Now we can use the expression we found for the length to find the length of the cemetery:

length = 8w - 18 = 8(7) - 18 = 46

So the dimensions of the cemetery are 14 meters by 19 meters.

Answer 2

266 = (w)(8w - 18)

Can you solve for w and answer?