Question

A pizza box with a square base is to be made from a rectangular sheet of cardboard by cutting six 1-inch squares from the corners and the middle sections and folding up the sides. If the area of the base is to be 144 in squared, what size piece of cardboard should be used?

Answer 1

I think 27 x 14.

Answer 2

ok so.....how did you get that?

Answer 3

When you cut out the 6 1x1 squares, you can fold the flaps up. On the width, you'll have 12 inches with 2 flaps folded up . Similar for the length. You need 12x12 for 144 for the base. I personally like bigger pizzas :-)

Answer 4

If this is algebra, you might try writing out an expression that involves the full length and width, taking advantage of the extra knowledge that the base of the pizza box must be a square.

In other words, if your intuition concerning pizza isn't as refined as @tcarroll010 ;) you might try solving algebraically. But it would probably help a bunch to sketch it out like above, even if you don't know all the dimensions.