Question

The length of the base of an isosceles triangle is x. The length of a leg is 2x-4. The perimeter of the triangle is 47 Find x

Answer 1

1) Let's sketch this out to better grasp it:

2) Given that we can write out the following equation to find out the value of x:

$2P=2x-4+x+2x-4$

Now we can plug into the Perimeter (2P) the value 47 and then solve it for x:

$\begin{gathered} 2x-4+x+2x-4=47 \\ 4x+x-8=47 \\ 5x=47+8 \\ 5x=55 \\ \frac{5x}{5}=\frac{55}{5} \\ x=11 \end{gathered}$

We could do that because the Perimeter is the sum of