The prom committee has decided to create a replica of the St. Louis arch as a gateway to enter the prom. Because of the height of the ceiling they have decided that the arch should be 8 feet high. They don't want the arch to be too wide or too narrow. After much discussion they finally agreed that at a height of 6 feet the arch must be 4 feet wide.

Your job is to build the arch. Research the arch on the internet to see what it looks like and decide what materials would be good to use to make it look realistic.

Use the links below to help you determine an equation for the arch. Use the equation to determine the width of the arch at its base.

Links:

Rational equations are tricky because you can't divide by zero.

What happens to the graph as you get close to dividing by zero?

What determines the shape and postion of the graph?

Try to find the answers at this link:

When a quadratic equation is in vertex form it is easy to tell where the vertex of the graph will be and what shape the graph will take.