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In your General Exam you may need to work out the area of any of the following shapes; rectangle, triangle, rhombus, kite and parallelogram. You may also need to work out the area of combined shapes.
Calculating the area of a rectangle or of a triangle
For all the shapes you do calculations for, make sure that you don't confuse area (the space taken up by a surface) with perimeter (the distance round the outside of a shape).
Remember that areas are measured in square units - square centimetres cm2, square metres m2 etc.
The area of a rectangle
The area of a rectangle is found by multiplying the length by the breadth.
For this rectangle:
Area = length x breadth
= 6 x 3.5
= 21cm2
The area of a triangle
The area of a triangle is found by multiplying 1/2 by the base by the height.
For the first triangle:
Area = 1/2 x base x height
= 1/2 x 8 x 5
= 20cm2
For the second triangle:
Area = 1/2 x base x height
= 1/2 x 10 x 6
= 30cm2
Watch
Learning Zone Scotland
To me, to you...the Chuckle brothers learn some useful tips for measuring area
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