What is the difference between area and perimeter?

Question

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Want to paint a wall - need to know how much paint you need? that's area.

Want to build a fence for your puppy around your back yard. That's perimeter.

Let's take a closer look.

Answer 1

Area measures the space inside the shape, while Perimeter measures the distance around the outside of that shape. What that means is that Perimeter is a 1D measurement of the boundary, whereas Area is a 2D measurement of how much space is enclosed within a shape's perimeter.

I hope that helps get you moving in a good direction! Feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions beyond that :)

Answer 2

While perimeter is the measurement of a shape around it's borders/sides/edges; Area is the measurement of the space enclosed within/inside the borders/sides/edges. For example, if I want to fence a rectangular garden of length 20 feet and width 5 feet. I will need 20+20+5+5=50 feet of barbed wire/any other fencing material. So here I measured the Perimeter which the total of all sides. I can also simplify the totaling with a formula - 2(length + Width) = 2(20+5) = 2X 25= 50 feet.

But if I Want to cover the coil of this rectangular garden with some kind of a ground cover like a weed-barrier sheet or Mulching sheet, then I should know the area of this garden. for this I use the formula length X width. So the area of this Rectangular field is 20 X 5= 100 Square feet. Let's understand why the units are Square feet. Imagine, the ground covering sheets are sold as square shaped pieces of length 1 foot and width 1 foot. If I start laying these sheets row-wise, I need 20 sheets to cover 1 row lengthwise and I have to cover 5 such rows in total. so 20 X 5 = 100 'square' sheets. Hope you got this! Happy learning.

Answer 3

Imagine a rectangle that’s 5 feet long and 3 feet wide.

1. Area = 5 × 3 = 15 square feet (how much space to paint)
2. Perimeter = 2 × (5 + 3) = 2 × 8 = 16 feet (how much fence you need)

Answer 4

Area is the space inside of a 2-D shape. 

A= LxW —->Area of a Rectangle = Length x Width 

( You must have both side in the same units ( ex. feet, inches, miles ) 

Perimeter is the distance around the outside of a 2-D shape.  

       P= S+S+S+S   

       Perimeter of a Rectangle = Side+ Side+ Side+ Side

       P= S+S+S 

       Perimeter of a triangle = Side + Side= Side 

Hint: 2-d- stand for 2 Dimensional . These are flat shapes. Like a piece of paper is a Rectangle .