A rectangle has a width of 3 inches and a length of x inches. The value of the perimeter of the rectangle is equal to the value of the area of the rectangle. Graph a system of linear equations to find x .

The problem gives you two equations you can find, the perimeter of the rectangle, and the area of the rectangle. You can get both of these equations relatively simply, there are 4 sides to a rectangle, 2 are 6 inches long and 2 are x inches long, so you get p=2x + 12. The area is the recatnges base times it's height, or a=6x. If you change p and a out for y, you get the system of equations y=2x+12, and y=6x. To graph, just graph them independently on the same graph. The point where the 2 graphs meet is the soulution, the y coordinate will be both the area and perimeter of the graph, and the x coordinate will be the length of side x.

If you want to solve it algebraically, you can substitute 6x for y and get 6x=2x+12, and you can easily solve this by subtracting 2x from both sides (4x=12), and divide by 4 to get x=3 for the x coordinate. For the y corrdinate, plug it back into the original equations and you should get the same answer twice, your y corrdinate (y=18). If you didn't get the same answer twice, there probably is a algebra error somewhere.