Question

A square of area 36cm is cut out to make two rectangles, which we'll call A and B. The ratio is 2:1 for A: B. Work out the length and width of both A and B.

Answer 1

Answer:

*by length i mean height

Length of A = 6

Width of A = 4

Length of B = 6

Width of B = 2

Step-by-step explanation:

You can approach this question in many different ways, but this is how i did it. I prefer to draw diagrams whenever i can, it just makes it easier, but its your choice what you choose to do.

Since its a square, we know that both the original length and width are 6.

Depending on which way you cut it, either the length or width will stay the same for both rectangles, but you'd still be right. I assumed they were cutting it down the middle, so the length stays 6 for both A and B.

To find the width of A and B:

The width of the square is 6 and i divided that by 3, becauce the ratio is 2:1, which has three "parts" to it (2+1=3).

So now we have 3 parts, each with a width of 2. From the ratio, we know that the width of A has to be double the width of B.

From this i get, width of A = 4 and width of B =2.

If you check this against the ratio 2:1, you'll see its correct because 4:2 simplifies down to 2:1 as well.

* if you want to be extra sure of you answer you can do some trial and error with different values for B and see if it fits the ratio, but theoretically, nothing else should work.

So the final answer is:

Length of A = 6

Width of A = 4

Length of B = 6

Width of B = 2

Hope that helped :)