Can anyone solve 4x^2 + 12x - 40? you would have to find what multiplies to get - 40 but adds to get 12, but you do something with th 4x^2 as well

There's really nothing to solve, since there's no equation there.

Perhaps you want that expression factored. We can do that.

First, all 3 terms share a common factor of 4. Let's pull that out,

and see what's left to be factored:

4x² + 12x - 40 = 4 (x² + 3x - 10).

Now, the expression left inside the parentheses looks

like it might be a lot easier to handle.

Here's what the whole expression looks like after the

quadratic inside the parentheses is factored:

4 (x² + 3x - 10) = 4 (x + 5) (x - 2).

There it is. Understand ... we haven't changed anything,

and we haven't solved anything. We only wrote the original

expression in a different form. It's still just an expression that

stands for a number, and we won't know the number until

somebody tells us the value of 'x'.