Question

A person's rectangular dog pen for his dog must have an area of 400 square feet. Also, the length must be 10 feet

longer than the width. Find the dimensions of the pen.


The width of the pen is ??
and the length of the pen is ??

Answer 1

The width of the pen is 10 feet and the length is 20 feet.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the dimensions of the dog pen, we can set up an equation based on the given information.

Let's let the width be represented by 'w'.

The length of the pen will then be 'w + 10'.

Since the area of a rectangle is equal to its length times its width, we can write the equation:

w * (w + 10) = 400

To solve this equation, we need to set it equal to zero and factor it.

w * (w + 10) - 400 = 0

Factoring the equation gives us:

(w + 20)(w - 10) = 0

Setting each factor equal to zero gives us two possible values for w:

w + 20 = 0 or w - 10 = 0

• w = -20 (rejected since the width of a pen cannot be negative)
• w = 10

Therefore, the width of the pen is 10 feet and the length is 10 + 10 = 20 feet.