Posted by Joel on September 22, 2002 at 23:14:47:
In Reply to: still a little confused posted by jalomy king on September 22, 2002 at 20:55:11:
: i tried it out and i don't know what to do with the x^2
: 1/(x-1)+ x/(x+2)=2
: LCD=(x-1)(x+2)
: x+2 + x^2-x=2x-2*2x+4
: am i going about this in the right way??? what do i do next???
There's an error on the right side:
2*(x-1)*(x+2)
=2*(x^2+x-2)
=2*x^2+2*x-4
So now the whole thing is:
x + 2 + x^2 - x = 2*x^2 + 2*x - 4
Now subtract (x^2+2) from both sides to get
0 = x^2 + 2*x - 6
So now you have a quadratic equation that you won't be able to factor, but you can use the quadratic equation to solve it.
(Or, maybe you wrote the original problem incorrectly.)
Anyway, if you use the quadratic equation, you should come up with [-2 +/- sqrt(28)]/2 which works out to approximately 1.64575 or -3.64575.