Question

A triangle has an area of 24 square meters. The base is two meters longer than the height. What is the length of the base of the triangle?

Answer 1

Area of a triangle = bXh / 2

Therefore the equation is:
bXh / 2 = 24

Now we have to work backwards,
bXh = 24 X 2
bXh = 48

Now we have to find 2 numbers that you can multiply together to get 48:
24 X 2
12 X 4
8 X 6

The only numbers that would work in this case are: 8 X 6

This is because 24m would be 22m bigger and 12m would be 8m bigger, but 8m would be 2m bigger. Just like we want.

We can check this by inserting the numbers in the equation.

bXh / 2 = 24
8 X 6 / 2 = 24

Answer 2

The length is 6 because 6•4 =24