Perimeter

The perimeter of a figure is the total distance around the edge of the figure. For
example, a square whose sides are 6 inches long has a perimeter of 6 x 4 = 24 inches
because it has 4 sides 6 inches long. A rectangle whose length and width are 4 meters
and 3 meters has a perimeter of 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 = 14 meters.
Now, can you tell me what the perimeter of a rectangle whose length is 8 feet and
whose width is 3 feet is?

The distance around a two-dimensional shape.

Example: the perimeter of this rectangle is 3+7+3+7 = 20
The perimeter of a circle is called the circumference.

What is the formula to find the perimeter?

To find the perimeter of a polygon, take the sum of the length of each side. The formula
for perimeter of a rectangle is: . To find the perimeter of a regular polygon, multiply the
number of sides by the length of one side.

The area of a polygon is the number of square units inside the polygon. To
understand the difference between perimeter and area, think of perimeter as
the length of fence needed to enclose the yard, whereas area is the space
inside the yard. Perimeter is 1-dimensional and is measured in linear units
such as inches, feet or meters. Area is 2-dimensional: it has a length and a
width. Area is measured in square units such as square inches, square feet or
square meters.
To find the area of a rectangle, multiply the length by the width. The
formula is:
, where is the area, is the length, is the width, and means
multiply.

A square is a rectangle with 4 equal sides. To find the area of a square,

multiply the length of one side by itself. The formula is:
or
, where A is the area, s is the length of a side, and
means multiply.
Let's look at some examples of finding the area of rectangles.

Example 1: Find the area of a square with each side measuring 2 inches.
Solution:
= (2 in) (2 in) = 4 in2
Example 2: A rectangle has a length of 8 centimeters and a width of 3
centimeters. Find the area.
Solution:
= (8 cm) (3 cm) = 24 cm2

In Examples 1 and 2, we found the area given the dimensions of the rectangle. Let's look at
some examples in which we are given the area of the rectangle, and are asked to work
backwards to find the missing dimension.

Example 3: The area of a square is 9 square centimeters. How long is one

side?
Solution:
9 cm2 =
Since 3 3 = 9, we get 3 cm 3 cm = 9 cm2. So must equal 3
cm.
= 3 cm

Example 4: The area of a rectangle is 12 square inches and the width is 3

inches. What is the length?
Solution:
12 in2 = 3 in
Since 4 3 = 12, we get (4 in) (3 in) = 12 in2. So must equal
4 in.
= 4 in

Summary:

The dimensions of a rectangle are length and width. Given the

length and width of a rectangle, we can find the area. Given
the area and one dimension of a rectangle, we can find the
other dimension. The formula for area of a rectangle is:
where is the length and is the width.
A square is a rectangle with 4 equal sides The formula for area
of a square is:
or
where is the length of one side.

A Rectangle's Perimeter
The perimeter of a rectangle is equal to the sum of all the sides. However, since a rectangle's
opposite sides are congruent, we only need to know the length and width.
We can write this in an equation this way:
P=l+w+l+w
where P is the perimeter, l is the length of the rectangle and w is its width. But instead of writing
the l and w twice, we can simplify the equation like this:
P = 2l + 2w
What if we were given the following measurements?

This rectangle has a length of 6 inches and a width of 3 inches. We can still calculate the
rectangle's perimeter because we know that the other two sides also measure three and six inches,
respectively.
So, we plug in 6 for l and 3 for w in our equation, and we have
P = 2(6) + 2(3) = 18
This rectangle's perimeter is 18 inches.
What if we were given the measurements for these two sides?

The image tells us that this rectangle's length is 4 feet, but we know nothing about its width.
Even though we're given two sides, they're not the length and the width, both of which we need
to determine perimeter. So we can't calculate this rectangle's perimeter from the information
given.