Question

May someone walkthrough this problem with me?
Suppose you have a wire of length \, a \, inches , where \, a=8 \,, which you are able to cut into two pieces. One piece is to be bent into the shape of a square and the other piece is to be bent into the shape of an equilateral triangle. Refer to this link for a picture.

Let \, x \, denote the location of where the wire will be cut (see the picture). Note that \, x=0\, corresponds to no cut, with the entire wire being bent into an equilateral triangle, and \, x= 8\, also corresponds to no cut, but with the entire wire being bent into a squar