Captain has 12m of fencing to make rectangular pens to put around his garden. He wants to enclose the biggest area possible. Draw three diffrent pens he could make. Which pen has the greatest area?

Question

Captain salman has 12m of fencing that he wants to use to make rectangular pens to put around his garden to keep predators out. He wants to enclose the biggest area possible. Draw three diffrent pens he could make. Which pen has the greatest area?

Answer 1

A rectangle has 2 opposite sides that are the same. So if we cut a rectangle in half (across the diagonal), we would have half of the perimeter like this:

So 12/2 = 6. That means we can split up 6 in 3 different ways, like 1 and 5, 2 and 4, or 3 and 3

The area of the top one is 5 sq m. The area of the second one is 8 sq m, and the area of the 3rd one is 9 sq m