What are 5 ways of making a 20cm squared?

Answer 1

There are infinitely many ways.

Pick any number greater than or equal to sqrt(20) = 4.472 cm.

Let that be the length of your rectangular area, L.

Let the breadth be B = 20/L cm.

Then clearly, area = L*B = L*(20/L) = 20 cm2

So, L = 20 cm gives B = 1 cm

L = 10 cm gives B = 2 cm

L = 5 cm gives B = 4 cm

L = 1 metre gives B = 0.2 cm

L - 1 kilometre gives B = 0.0002 cm

and so on.

There is no need to stick with rectangles: yuo could do circles, triangles, other polygons or even irregular shapes. Cut out 20 squares of 1 cm each and arrange them so that each one of them is "connected" side-to-side with another. You can make L-shapes, and F-shapes and all sorts. Its just that rectangles are easiest to calculate and present an answer.