Video Transcript
These two shapes have the same
perimeter: a regular hexagon and a square. The length of each side of the
hexagon is eight centimetres. Calculate the area of the
square.
We know these two shapes have the
same perimeter. The perimeter of a 2D shape is the
distance all the way around. We find the perimeter by adding
together the sum of all the sides. We’re told that the length of each
side of the hexagon is eight centimetres. And we know that a hexagon has six
sides. So we could either add together six
lots of eight or multiply six by eight. Six times eight is 48. So the perimeter of the hexagon is
48.
This means that the square also has
a perimeter of 48 centimetres. But a square only has four
sides. So we can calculate the length of
one side by dividing the perimeter by four. 48 divided by four is 12. Now we know the length of the sides
of the square. Each side is 12 centimetres.
Now we know the length of the
sides, we can calculate the area of the square. We find the area of a square by
multiplying the length times the width. So the area of the square is 12
centimetres multiplied by 12 centimetres. 12 12s are 144. And we write area as centimetres
squared. The area of the square is 144
centimetres squared.
First, we calculated the perimeter
of the hexagon by multiplying eight by six. We knew this meant the perimeter of
the square was also 48 centimetres. And we divided this by four to tell
us the length of one of the square sides. Once we knew the length of the
square sides, we were able to calculate the area by multiplying 12 by 12, to give us
our answer 144 centimetres squared.
