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A rectangular garden has an area of 30m² and the length of each side is a whole number of metres. What is the smallest possible perimeter of the garden? Give your answer in metres (m).

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Final answer:

To find the smallest possible perimeter of a rectangular garden with an area of 30m², one needs to select dimensions whose factors are closest to each other. In this case, 5m and 6m produce the smallest perimeter of 22 meters.

Step-by-step explanation:

Rectangular Garden Perimeter

The question pertains to finding the smallest possible perimeter of a rectangular garden with an area of 30m² where the length of each side is a whole number of meters.

To minimize the perimeter for a given area, we need to find the dimensions of the rectangle that are closest to each other, because a square has the smallest perimeter for a given area.

In this case, the possible dimensions that multiply to 30 are (1, 30), (2, 15), (3, 10), and (5, 6). Out of these, (5, 6) are the closest to each other, so the smallest perimeter would be 2(5) + 2(6) = 10 + 12 = 22 meters.

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