Question 1

Jen and her friends are designing a robot for a STEM competition. The goal of the competition is
to have a robot complete an obstacle course in the least amount of time.
Jen and her friends need to consider the robot’s height and its width at its base. The robot must
be short enough and narrow enough to navigate through several arches along the obstacle
course. The director of the competition laid out components of the obstacle course on a
coordinate plane. Instead of giving the width and maximum height of the arch, the director
created an expression based on the location of the arch on the coordinate plane and gave each
team this expression to represent the height of the arch, in inches, at any value of x along the
arch:
-x2 + 5x + 24.

Factor the expression to find the x-intercepts, show your working. (2)

The factor is (x+8)(x-3)

The x-intercepts are ̣(-8,0), (3,0)
-x^2 + 5x + 24 = 0
x^2 - 8x + 3x - 24 = 0
x(x-8) + 3(x+8) = 0
+ x+8=0
=> x = -8
+ x-3=0
=> x = 3

Draw a diagram of the archway modeled by the equation y = -x2 + 5x + 24. Find and label the y-
intercept and the x-intercepts on the sketch. Then find and label the width of the archway at its
base and the height of the archway at its highest point, assuming the base of the archway is
along the x-axis. (3)
Question 2
After navigating the obstacle course, the team can create a computer simulation of another
obstacle course. Jen and her friends decide they would like to include a curved pit in their
obstacle course. They want to experiment with the equation and graph of y = x2 to see how
adding and multiplying values to the function will affect the parabola.
Describe what happens to the parent function when the following adjustments are made to
the equation of the curve. (4)

Next, the team wants to explore how it can change the steepness of the curved pit.
Identify how the graph of each equation compares with the graph of the parent quadratic
equation, y = x2

Fit the following equations into the table below (4)

( )
2
1 2 1
y=2 x
2
y= x y= (2 x )2 y= x
2 2

Steeper than y=x 2 Less steep than y=x 2

y = 2x^2 y = 1/2x^2

y = (2x)^2 y = (1/2x)^2
TASK 2

Restaurant Revenue
In this activity, you will create quadratic inequalities in one variable and use them to solve
problems. Read this scenario, and then use the information to answer the questions that
follow.
Noah manages a buffet at a local restaurant. He charges $10 for the buffet. On average, 16
customers choose the buffet as their meal every hour. After surveying several customers, Noah
has determined that for every $1 increase in the cost of the buffet, the average number of
customers who select the buffet will decrease by 2 per hour. The restaurant owner wants the
buffet to maintain a minimum revenue of $130 per hour.
Noah wants to model this situation with an inequality and use the model to help him make the
best pricing decisions.

Write two expressions for this situation, one representing the cost per customer and the other
representing the average number of customers. Assume that x represents the number of $1
increases in the cost of the buffet. (2)
(10 + x ) (16- 2x)

Use your answer to the previous question to create an inequality to model the minimum
revenue the restaurant owner wants. (2)

x^2 + 2x - 80 <= -65

Test values for x to see how it affects the revenue of the restaurant. Only whole number
values for x. (1)
x = 3,2,1

To maximize profits what do you recommend the restaurant does to its pricing? (2)
If they do decide to increase the prices what is the most they can increase it by and still satisfy
the minimum revenue requirement.
I recommend the restaurant increase the prices 2$ and the most they can increase is 3$ and
the minimum is 1$