Can you find the area of a rectangle by using the length and width?
Find the area of the rectangle shown.
The area of a rectangle is given by \text{Area}=\text{Length} \times \text{Width}.
When we calculate area, the unit of measurement is squared. If we have sides measured in centimetres \text{(cm)}, for example, the area will be \text{cm}^2.
By breaking a shape into smaller rectangles, we can work out the area of those rectangles first. We can then add those two values together, to work out the total area of our shape.
Answer the following:
Find the area of the top rectangle.
Find the area of the bottom rectangle.
Find the total area.
Make sure to add all the smaller shapes together to get the total area of the shape.
Once we know how to work out the area of rectangles, there are some handy things we can do. The distributive property of area means we can work out the area of a rectangle by breaking it into smaller rectangles.
The rectangle below has been split in to two rectangles. We want to work out the area.
What is the area of the purple rectangle on the left?
What is the area of the green rectangle on the right?
What is the area of the whole rectangle?
Some ways to work out the area of a rectangle in a grid are:
Break the rectangle into two parts then find the area of each part and add.
Multiply the number of unit squares in each row by the number of rows.