Question

x

Answer 1

What have you tried? Any random thoughts or ideas you have?

Answer 2

Everytime I try to do this I get a negative answer.

Answer 3

Can you show me your steps? I can help correct you where you're wrong.

Answer 4

Ahh, well a(x) describes how much he gains for every additional square foot. So this function is added to s(x) and doesn't stand on its own.

Answer 5

Well you agree that if x=1 then we haven't added anything, so the formula will just be simply s(x).

Now if he adds on, the extra space each produces at a rate of a(x). So if he has 2 then he must have

s(x)+a(x)

If he adds on 3 then he will have

s(x)+3*a(x)

So now we can see that the amount of extra is the variable x.

s(x)+x*a(x)

Now we can plug in and get:

\[\Large 10+x*(1.4^x-2)\]

Now you are probably wondering, how come if we plug in 1 we have fewer blueberries than if we just had 0 extra patches? Well maybe it's harder for him to correctly water and fertilize a couple of plants instead of a much larger population where they more or less can balance each other out. I'm no botanist.

Answer 6

Now you would just plug in x=4 since x is the number of extra area.