This board is covered with colorful squares. 🤗
How much space do you think this board covers? 🤔
To know that, we must find the board's area!
Area is the amount of space covered by a flat shape or surface.
Tip: We use area for flat spaces only.
The cover of a book is flat. The front of a closet door is flat.
Let's go back to our example of the colorful board.
We see that it's covered with squares.
👉 To find the area, we just need to count all the squares in it.
There are 30 squares.
So the area of the board is 30 square units.
1 square is 1 square unit.
Units of area tell us how big or small an area actually is.
Imagine that each square on the board is 1 cm wide and 1 cm long.
The area of this square is 1 square centimeter.
Square centimeter is a unit of measurement for area. It's written as cm².
In the United States, people also use square inches as a unit of area. It's written as sq.in. or in².
The area of a square that's 1 inch wide and 1 inch tall is 1 square inch.
So, if the area of each square on our board is 1 cm², then the area of the board is 30 cm². 👍
What if we want to measure the area of larger spaces, like this field of grass?
What unit of measurement should we use? 🤔
😌 Square centimeter would be too small.
For larger spaces, the unit of measurement often used is square meter. It's written as m².
When our unit of area is the square meter, it means that the area of each square is 1 m². 👍
In other words, the length of each square unit is 1 meter and its width is also 1 meter.
Now, let's measure the area of the yard.
👉 A grid can help us count the square units.
Each square unit has an area of 1 m².
How many square units cover the inside of the yard?
That's right! 45 square units.
So, the area of the yard is 45 m².
In the United States, people often use square feet instead of square meters!
1 square foot is the area of a 1 ft by 1 ft square.
The acronym for square foot is sq.ft. or ft².
Square feet are smaller than square meters.
1 m² is about 9 ft².
😎 Let's compare the areas of these two rectangles.
Which rectangle is larger?
The orange rectangle covers 12 squares. So, its area is 12 m².
The purple rectangle covers 15 squares. So, its area is 15 m².
👉 The purple rectangle is larger than the orange one!
Great work learning about area! 🎉
Now, ace the practice.