Richard is building a rectangular playground from 200 feet of fencing. The fencing must entirely enclose the playground. What is the maximum area of this playground?
To maximize the area of a rectangle, I need to make it as close to a square as possible. That means I should try to split the fencing into four equal parts and use them as the four sides of the square. If I do that, each side of the square will be 200/4 = 50 feet long. The area of the square will be 50 * 50 = 2500 square feet. That is the maximum area I can get from 200 feet of fencing. 