25 points and ! a decorative coffee table top is cut from a rectangle by cutting equal sized triangles from each corner. the length of the original rectangle is 8 more than it's width. the base and the height of each triangle is 1/4th of the width of the rectangle. if the area of the finished top is 352, find the length and width of the original rectangle.

Let  be the width of the original rectangle. Since the length of the rectangle is 8 more than the width,  will be the length of our rectangle.
We know that two equal triangles were cut form the rectangle to make the coffee table top, and that the base and height of those triangles is  of the width of the original rectangle. Since the width of the original rectangle is , the base and the height of both triangles will be .
We also know that the the area of the finished top is 352, so the sum of the areas of the triangles will 352.

Now, the formula to find the area of a triangle is:  
where 
is the area of the triangle 
is the base of the triangle 
is the height of the triangle 

We know that  and . Lets replace those values in our formula:


Notice that we have two triangles; therefore we need to multiply by 2 the area:


Since we know that the area of both triangles is 352, :








We can conclude that the width of our rectangle is  and its length is .