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Help? im confused plss!
Find the area of the regular polygon with the given radius or apothem

Help? im confused plss! Find the area of the regular polygon with the given radius-example-1
User Berk Soysal
by
2.5k points

1 Answer

19 votes
19 votes

Answer:

50 cm²

Explanation:

Given that the regular polygon is a square, there are multiple ways you can jump directly to the answer. Perhaps the simplest is to use the formula for the area of a rhombus:

A = 1/2(d1)(d2)

where d1 and d2 are the lengths of the diagonals. Here, we see that half the diagonal is 5 cm, so the area is ...

A = (1/2)(10 cm)(10 cm) = 50 cm² . . . . area of the polygon

__

Alternate solution

If you want to use the radius and the number of sides in a formula, you can consider the area of each triangle formed by radii and a side. That triangle has area ...

A = 1/2r²sin(α)

where r is the radius and α is the central angle. For an n-sided polygon, the area is the sum of n of these triangles, and the central angle is 360°/n. Then the polygon area is ...

A = n/2·r²·sin(360°/n)

For n = 4 and r = 5 cm, the area is ...

A = (4/2)(5 cm)²(sin(360°/4)) = 2(5 cm)²(1) = 50 cm² . . . . area of square

_____

Additional comment

The formula is somewhat different if you start with the length of the apothem. One way to find the area is using the above formula and the relation between the radius and apothem:

r = a·sec(180°/n)

Another formula uses the apothem directly:

A = n·a²·tan(180°/n)

User Sargis Isoyan
by
2.8k points
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