Question

The perimeter of a triangle equals 8 inches. Two of its sides are equal and each of them is 1.3 inches bigger than the third side. What are the sides of the triangle?

Answer 1

Let's call the lengths of our two types of sides <em />$x$ and $y$.

The two sides will that our 1.3 inches bigger than the third side will be have length x, and the length of the other side will be known as y. Thus, $x = y + 1.3$.

Considering this, we can add our sides together and set this value equal to 8, given the information in the problem:
$(y + 1.3) + (y + 1.3) + y = 3y + 2.6 = 8$

Now, let's solve for y.
$3y + 2.6 = 8$
$3y = 5.4$
$y = 1.8$

Now, we are not done yet. We must determine the true lengths of all of our sides. Using the equation we found earlier, the length of the two bigger sides is $y + 1.3 = 1.8 + 1.3 = \boxed{3.1}$ inches and the length of our smaller side is simply $\boxed{1.8}$ inches.

To verify, we can add these sides together and check that they equal 8:
3.1 + 3.1 + 1.8 = 8 ✔