Video Transcript
Order the shapes from shortest to longest.
In this problem, we’re given four rectangles, A, B, C, and D. And we’re asked to put them in order, starting with the shortest one and increasing in length until we reach the longest one. And there are several ways we could find the answer to this question. If we have a ruler, we could measure the length of each rectangle and then compare those measurements. Without a ruler, we could use a piece of paper and draw marks to compare the different lengths.
In this video, we’re going to use a third method, which is to compare by looking carefully at the rectangles, starting with the shortest, then identifying the longest, and then finding the two rectangles in between. So let’s start by identifying the first rectangle.
Can we see that one rectangle is the shortest? We should be able to see that rectangle A is shorter than all the others. And so the first letter in our sequence is A. Instead of identifying the next letter in the sequence, let’s jump to the end. Can we see that one rectangle is the longest? Well, it should be clear that rectangle B is longer than all the others. So we can write B at the end of our sequence.
Now, what we need to do is just to compare rectangles C and D. Which order should we write these lengths? Well, shapes C and D have been drawn quite near to each other and almost at the same angle. So this makes it a lot easier to compare them just by looking at them. If we look carefully, we can see that shape D is slightly shorter than shape C. So we know that the second shape in our sequence is D. And our third longest shape must be C.
And so the shapes in order from shortest to longest are A, D, C, and B.