The width of a widescreen tv is 18 inches greater than its height h. use the distributive property to write and simplify an expression for the area of the tv screen.

In general the area of a quadrilateral such as our TV screen is given by width multiplied by height. In this case we know that width = height + 18, so we can say that the area = height x (height + 18).   

The distributive property allows us to multiply a sum, in this case (height + 18) by multiplying each addend and then adding the products. So, using the distributive property we can simplify the expression so that: area = height^2 + (18 x height)