How to find the area of an acute / obtuse triangle - PSAT Math

Card 0 of 2

Question

If triangle ABC has vertices (0, 0), (6, 0), and (2, 3) in the xy-plane, what is the area of ABC?

Answer

Sketching ABC in the xy-plane, as pictured here, we see that it has base 6 and height 3. Since the formula for the area of a triangle is 1/2 * base * height, the area of ABC is 1/2 * 6 * 3 = 9.

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Question

The height, , of triangle in the figure is one-fourth the length of . In terms of h, what is the area of triangle ?

Answer

If $\dpi{100} \small h=\frac{1}{4}$ * $\dpi{100} \small \overline{PQ}$ , then the length of $\dpi{100} \small \overline{PQ}$ must be $\dpi{100} \small 4h$ .

Using the formula for the area of a triangle ( $\frac{1}{2}bh$ ), with $\dpi{100} \small b=4h$ , the area of the triangle must be $2h^{2}$ .

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