A long piece of wood of length 2.0 m is broken into 4 pieces with two pieces of length a and the other two pieces of length
b. the four pieces are put together to form a rectangle. find b if your aim is to have a rectangle with the maximum area.
Best Answer: 2a+2b=4
a+b=2
a=2-b
Let area of the rectangle is A
so A=a*b
A=(2-b)b
A=2b-b^2
taking derivative of both sides of above equation with respect to b
we get,
dA/db=2-2b
for maximum A
dA/db=0
2-2b=0
b=1
so,
b=1 meter