The square pyramid shown below has a base with sides of 10 units. The slant height of the pyramid is 8 units.

Question

Can someone please help me!!!

Answer 1

Hi Kahla! 

To answer this question, we would need to do a little bit of drawing. But, I will try to explain as best as I can in words. Also, I don't what your question is looking for exactly, but I assume you're looking for the surface area of the square pyramid? If so, this is how we can figure it out:

 

The first thing we need to understand is what a square pyramid looks like. A square pyramid has a square base and four (4) triangles that meet at the top (think of the Egyptian pyramids!). When we solve for the surface area of a 3D shape, we need to find the area of each 2D shape that makes it up. 

In other words we need to find the area of a sqaure and 4 triangles, then add them together! 

To calculate the area of the square we just need to multiply one side of the square by another: side * side = Area of Square

 

To calculate the area of the triangles, we just need to use the side length of the square (since the two shapes are connected), multiply that by the slant height, and divide by 2: (side * slant height)/2 = Area of Triangle

Remember! We have 4 triangles to find the area for so we can just multiply the Area of Triangle by 4! 

 

Then we add everything together to find the surface area of the square pyramid!!

So the full equation looks like: 

Area_square + 4 * Area_Triangle = Surface Area_{square pyramid} 

I hope this helps!!