The length of a rectangle is increasing at a rate of 7 cm/s and its width is increasing at a rate of 6 cm/s. When the length is 12 cm and the width is 8 cm, how fast is the area of the rectangle increasing

Step-by-step explanation:

This is a super simple problem. I'm going to walk through it as I do when I teach this to my students for the first time.

We are given a rectangle. We are told to find how fast the area is changing under certain conditions. That tells us that the main equation for this problem is the area formula for a rectangle which is

. If we are looking for the rate at which the rectangle's area is changing, that means that we need to find the derivative of the area implicitly. This derivative is found using the product rule because the length is being multiplied by the width:

. If our unknown is the rate at which the area is changing, , that means that everything else has to have a value (because you can only have one unknown in an equation). Here's what we're told:

The length of the rectangle is increasing at a rate of 7 cm/s, so that satisfies our ;

the width is increasing at a rate of 6 cm/s, so that satisfies our ;

and all of this is going on when the length = 12 and the width = 8. It looks like everything will have a value except for our unknown. Filling in:

and

so

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step-by-step explanation: