Areas of Polygons

I have learned that there are many ways to find the area of a polygon.  It all depends on what shape you are measuring.  There are so many different polygons, but I will share two of them with you today.

The area of a polygon is measured in square units, in which a square unit has 1 foot on each side (1 ft squared).

The formulas for some of the different polygons are easy to remember! One of the easiest to remember is the rectangle:

                                                   Area= length x width (A= lw)

Like in the picture above, you can think of the rectangle being made up of 1 foot squared cubes.  In the example above, the rectangle is made up of 2 square units by 4 square units.  We can plug these numbers into our formula to find the area of the rectangle.

A= l x w

=4 x 2

=6 square feet

Another formula to look at is that of the triangle. The formula to find the area of a triangle is:

Area= 1/2 x base x height (A=1/2bh)

As you can see from the example above, the height of the triangle must be measured form the tip of the triangle in a vertical line to the base.  It is not possible for the height to be measured at any other point on the triangle.