Use a tangram. Find the area of the tangram. The square is one square inch.

Question

 Use a tangram. Find the area of the tangram. The square is one square inch.

Answer 1

Go look up a picture of a tangram. If the little square is one square inch, let's see if we can figure out the area of one of the biggest triangles. Two of the biggest triangles make up exactly half the whole tangram, so four would make up the entire thing. Once we figure out the area of the biggest triangle, we can multiply it by four to get the area of the tangram.

 

 

That big triangle is a right triangle. Each leg is twice the length of the square's side, making each leg 2 inches long. We can calculate the area of the triangle using 2 = base and 2 = height:

 

A = 1/2(bh)

A = 1/2(2)(2)

A = 1/2(4)

A = 2

 

The big triangle has an area of 2 square inches. That means the area of the tangram is four times that, or 2(4) = 8 square inches.