Bernard is two years older than his sister Therese and four years younger than his sister Josephine. The product of his sisters' ages is the age of his mother, 40.

A. If x is Bernard's age, write his two sisters' ages in terms of x.

B. Write Bernard's mother's age in terms in terms of x and solve this quadratic equation.

C. What is Bernard's age?

Please show working out

Firstly Bernard = x

A) lets focus on Therese first. Bernard id two years older than her so for Therese’s equation in terms of x it would be x+2. Now for Josephine Bernard is 4 years younger than HER so it would be 4-x.

B) The mother is the PRODUCT of the sisters’ ages so (multiplication)

It would be like this: (x+2)(4-x)= 40 This is all in terms of x.

Solving for the equation (using distributive property) we get:

4x-x+8-2x=40

(Reorganize to group like terms, remember to go in order from the numeral numbers with variables, to variables only then numbers only): 4x-2x-x+8=40 (now combine like terms and simplify): x+8=40 this is his mom’s age in terms of x

C) HERE we can solve for x:

Isolating x to get the answer we move the 8 to the other side of the equation and it becomes a negative 8 so:

x=40-8

x=32

Therefore Bernard is 32 years old.

Hope this helps!

x= -3 and

step-by-step explanation:

to find the roots of a cubic, use division or factoring to find the factors then set equal to 0. as this is a difference of cubes, it factors into

where a is the cube root of .

here   this is 27 and the cube root of 27 is 3. so we write using the form:

.

set each factor to 0 and solve for x.

x-3=0

x=3

the quadratic expression does not factor and must be solved using the quadratic formula.

where a = 1, b=3, and c=9

this cubic has two complex roots.