You may have heard of measuring the area and the perimeter of shapes. But what exactly are they?
Perimeter is the measure of distance around a shape. For example, the distance around a soccer field.
Area is the measure of the surface something covers. For example, the space in which you pour batter in a cake tin for baking in the oven.
Calculating the perimeter of a rectangle or square
To find the perimeter of a rectangle or square you have to add the lengths of all the four sides. x is in this case the length of the rectangle and y is the width of the rectangle.
Perimeter = x + x + y + y
For example, you want to find the perimeter of your soccer field.
To calculate the perimeter of the soccer pitch, we first measure:
The length: 115 yards - x
The width: 74 yards – y
Perimeter = 115 + 115 + 74 + 74
The perimeter is 378 yards.
Calculating the area of a geometric shape
For calculating the area of squares and rectangles, the formula is multiplying the length times the width.
For example, you want to find out the area of your soccer pitch.
In order to calculate the area of the soccer pitch, we first measure:
The length: 115 yards
The width: 74 yards
Then we multiply the length by the width:
115 x 74 = 8,510 yards
The soccer pitch is 8,510 square yards.
Why do we say square yards?
To answer that question, let's start by looking at a square.
As you can see, each side is 1 yard long. So the total area of the square is 1x1 which is 1.
1 what?
It isn't 1 yard—that is the length of the side, but not the area of the square. The area of the square is "1 square yard". A square yard is a measurement of area and it can also be written as 1 yd2.
