Problem solving geometry

Question

A room in Shellys house is a square whose perimeter is 52ft.  She removes a wall making the room a rectangle that is 24ft long.  What is the perimeter of the room now?

Answer 1

Hi Karen,

We know that, for a square, length=width. So for a perimeter of 54ft, we can divide it by four (for the four sides of a square) to determine the length of one side. This comes out to 13.5ft.

Now that we know the length of one side before the demolition (13.5ft), we can adjust for the new room. Two sides will be the original length, while the other two sides will be 24ft long.

We can add up the four sides (13.5+13.5+24+24) to come up with the new room perimeter (75ft).