Let
and
be the length and height, respectively, of the rectangle.
Let the bottom left vertex be the origin (0, 0), and position the triangle so that the bottom leg lies on the horizontal axis in the
-plane. The hypotenuse of the triangle then lies on the line through (0, 0) and (6, 8), with slope 8/6 = 4/3. Then for some
between 0 and 6, we have
.
This means for some fixed distance
from the origin, the rectangle has length
and height
. Thus the area of the rectangle can be expressed completely in terms of
as
Non-calculus method:
Complete the square to get
which is maximized when the quadratic term vanishes at
, giving a maximum volume of
.
Calculus method:
Differentiate
and find the critical points.
Differentiate again to check the sign of the second derivative at the critical point.
which indicates a local maximum at
. Hence the maximum area is
, as before.