Given:
The area of a square picture frame is 55 square inches.
To find:
The length of one side of the frame.
Solution:
Let the length of one side of the frame is x inches.
Area of square is

where a is side length.
Area of frame is


Taking square root on both sides.



, so
. Since 55 is closer to 49, therefore,
is closer to 7.
Therefore, the length of one side of the frame is 7 inches.