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The base of a triangle is 3 inches shorter than its height. Its area is 275 square inches. Set up a quadratic equation and solve to find its base and height.

User Tjholub
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Answer: hope its help

Let's start by assigning variables to the unknown quantities in the problem. Let h be the height of the triangle in inches, and let b be the base of the triangle in inches.

According to the problem, the base of the triangle is 3 inches shorter than its height. This can be expressed as:

b = h - 3

The formula for the area of a triangle is:

A = (1/2)bh

We are given that the area of the triangle is 275 square inches, so we can substitute these values into the formula to get:

275 = (1/2)(h)(h-3)

Simplifying the right-hand side, we get:

275 = (1/2)(h^2 - 3h)

Multiplying both sides by 2 to eliminate the fraction, we get:

550 = h^2 - 3h

Rearranging this equation to standard quadratic form, we get:

h^2 - 3h - 550 = 0

Now we can solve for h using the quadratic formula:

h = (-b ± sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / (2a)

In this case, a = 1, b = -3, and c = -550, so we can substitute these values into the formula to get:

h = (-(-3) ± sqrt((-3)^2 - 4(1)(-550))) / (2(1))

Simplifying the expression inside the square root, we get:

h = (3 ± sqrt(2209)) / 2

We can ignore the negative solution since height must be positive, so we get:

h = (3 + sqrt(2209)) / 2 ≈ 29.04

Now that we know the height of the triangle is approximately 29.04 inches, we can use the equation b = h - 3 to find the length of the base:

b = 29.04 - 3 = 26.04

Therefore, the base of the triangle is approximately 26.04 inches, and the height is approximately 29.04 inches.

Explanation:

User Gasparuff
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