Question

Olga is putting a border around her triangular flower bed. She has 20 feet of border material, which will fit perfectly around the bed. She wants to make the flower bed larger by tripling the length of each of its sides. How much border material will she need in total?

Answer 1

Answer: She would need 60 ft of border material.

Step-by-step explanation: Olga has a triangular flower bed, which means her flower bed is three sided. Also it has been stated that she has 20 feet of border material available. which will fit perfectly around the bed. This also means the perimeter of her flower bed is 20 feet.

Assuming the sides of her flower bed are labeled as a, b and c. Then a plus b plus c would equal 20, since the perimeter is the addition of all sides of the triangle.

However, she intends to triple the length of each side of the flower bed, and that would translate into the sides being 3a, 3b and 3c respectively. This effectively triples the length of the perimeter which is shown as,

Perimeter = a + b + c

20 = a + b + c

3(20) = 3a + 3b + 3c

60 = 3a + 3b + 3c

Therefore, she is going to need more border material and that is calculated as 60 feet.

Answer 2

60 feet

Explanation:

We know that a triangle has 3 sides, in this case we will call them a, b and c.

It tells us that everything is material, it measures 20, that is:

a + b + c = 20

They tell us that she wants to triple each side and to know how much material she would need in total. Then it would be:

border material need = 3 * a + 3 * b + 3 * c

common factor 3:

border material need = 3 * (a + b + c)

border material need = 3 * 20

border material need = 60

Which means that she needs a total of 60 feet of material.