Okay. First, you need to break this apart. As you can see, the dashed line outlines two triangles on the side. Between them, there is a rectangle. Now, we need to find the short leg length of each triangle. To do this, we need to subtract the length of the top of the trapezoid from the length of the bottom
9 - 7 = 2
Next, we divide by two because the 2 inches left are split evenly between the short legs of the two triangles.
2/2 = 1
<span>With this, we know the length of the short leg of both triangles is 1 inch. This also happens to be the base of both triangles. Thus, to find the area of the triangles, we plug 6 and 1 into the formula used to find the areas of the two triangles.
A = bh/2
Plug in 6 for the highth and 1 for the base.
A= (6 x 1)/2 = 6/2 = 3
Here is the catch for this part. There are two triangles so we must double the value of 3 to get 6. As such, you can skip the divide by two part above.
Next, you need to find the area of the rectangle by simply multiplying the value of 7 by the value of 6 to get:
7 x 6 = 42
Finally, we add the areas of the triangles (6 total) and the area of the square (49) together to get:
42 + 6 = 48
Obviously, since we have been working with inches, the unit for area is square inches, making the answer 48 inches squared or 48in^2! </span>
