Question

Jermaine glues 3 identical pieces of paper as shown below and makes a square. Find the unknown side length of 1 piece of paper. Then, find the total area of 2 pieces of paper.

Answer 1

3 cm

54 square cm

Explanation:

In this case, being 3 pieces of identical papers, it means that we must divide by 3 the distance measured by the 3 units that are 9 cm, just like this:

`\frac{9\text{ cm}}{3}=3\text{ cm}`

Which means that the unknown side of the paper is 3 cm.

To calculate the area, we know that the area of a rectangle is the product of the height and length, thus

`\begin{gathered} A=h\cdot l \\ h=3 \\ l=9 \\ A=3\cdot9 \\ A=27 \end{gathered}`

As two pieces of paper are the same, when calculating an area we can calculate that of two, like this

`2\cdot27=54`

Therefore the area of the two pieces is 54 square cm