How do you calculate the area?

Answer 1

it depends what the shape is. for a square or rectangle it is simply length * width

so if a rectangle has a length of 5cm and a width of 3cm then you do:

5*3=15

A=15cm^2

(A=area) (^2 means squared - area is expressed in centimetres squared, metres squared etc.)

For a triangle you do 1/2 base*height.

so if a triangle had a base length of 3cm and a height to the top of the triangle of 4cm then you would do:

3*4=12

12/2=6

A=6

/\ /\

: / \

: / \

: / \

\/ --------

Height <-------->

base

Finally circle is simply #r^2

(#=pi which is 3.1415 to 4.d.p but has an infinite number of non reccuring decimals)

(r is the radius which is the distance between the centre of a circle and the edge)

so if the radius of a circle was 2cm then you would first square that to get 4cm and then times it by pi which is about 12.566

there are formulas for pretty much every shape but they get more and more complicated the higher the number of sides.