sat suite question viewer
Square A has side lengths that are times the side lengths of square B. The area of square A is times the area of square B. What is the value of ?
Explanation
The correct answer is . The area of a square is , where is the side length of the square. Let represent the length of each side of square B. Substituting for in yields . It follows that the area of square B is . It’s given that square A has side lengths that are times the side lengths of square B. Since represents the length of each side of square B, the length of each side of square A can be represented by the expression . It follows that the area of square A is , or . It’s given that the area of square A is times the area of square B. Since the area of square A is equal to , and the area of square B is equal to , an equation representing the given statement is . Since represents the length of each side of square B, the value of must be positive. Therefore, the value of is also positive, so it does not equal . Dividing by on both sides of the equation yields . Therefore, the value of is .