Answer:
The surface area of an object is the total area of all its faces. For a cube with sides of length 9 inches, the surface area can be calculated as follows:
The cube has six faces, all of which are identical squares.
The area of one square face is 9 inches x 9 inches = 81 square inches.
Therefore, the total surface area of the cube is 6 x 81 square inches = 486 square inches.
So the surface area of a cube with sides of 9 inches is 486 square inches.