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The height of a rectangular box is 2 times its length, and its width is 3 in more than its length. The volume of the box is 86 in³. Use a graphing calculator to find the length of the box. Round your answer to two decimal places.

User Cjohns
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1 Answer

4 votes

Answer:

10.2 inches

Explanation:

To solve this problem, we need to find the length of the box. We know the height is 2 times its length, so let's let the length be x. We also know the width is 3 more than the length, so let's let the width be x+3. Finally, we know the volume of the box is 86in^3. We can write an equation to represent this in terms of x and solve for x.

Since the volume of a rectangular prism is height * length * width, we can write:

86in^3 = (2x)(x+3)(x)

Expanding this expression, we get:

2x^2 + 6x^2 + 2x^3 = 86

Simplifying, we get:

2x^3 + 8x^2 + 2x = 86

Let's use the graphing calculator to find the root of this expression. We can use the built-in algebra solver to find the root. Since our problem is about finding the length, we know that x must be positive. So, let's use the graphing calculator to find the positive root.

Using the TI-84 Plus graphing calculator, we can solve this equation by typing in the above expression and finding the x-intercept using the "StatPlot" tool on the math menu.

We get an x-intercept at approximately 10.22 inches. So the length of the box is around 10.22 inches. Rounding to two decimal places, the length of the box is approximately 10.2 inches.

User NSUserDefault
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