Question

Hey, I do not want the answer but could someone please explain to me on HOW to find the area of this figure? I forget how to :P

Answer 1

In order to find the area of this figure, you will need to separate the individual figures and find their areas, then add the total for the entire area.

The square part should be easy, it's only base * height. In this case, the base is 6 and the height is 5. You don't want the answer so that's the farthest I'll go with that =)

Then, there are the triangles.
Right triangles are easy to find area of in that they are simply a rectangle split diagonally, so the area of a triangle is simply base * height over 2, and since the triangles are the same measure, the base would be half the base of the square, which is 3. The height is 2.

Don't forget that there are two triangles, though, so a shortcut in this problem would be to solve one triangle for base * height and then leave off the divide by two step, since there are two triangles that have the same area, and so you would end up just multiplying by 2 in the end, thereby cancelling out the divide by 2 step entirely.

Hope that helped! =)