Area and the Distributive Property
- Author:
- Jack D. Gittinger
See Lab Instructions below the GeoGebra window.
COMBINING AREAS
Background
Ben wants to build a horse corral that is rectangle with a base of 6 units and a height of 4 units.
Step 1.
Turn on the GRID.
Use the MOVE (pointer) tool to drag the corners of the rectangle shown so that it has the units Ben wants for his corral.
Use the DISTANCE OR LENGTH tool to label the length of each side of the corral.
A New Addition
Later, Ben decides gets more horses and needs to add onto his corral.
He decides to add 8 more units of length to the base. The height will remain 4 units.
Step 2.
Use the SEGMENT BETWEEN TWO POINTS tool to construct new, additional fences showing the 8 X 4 addition to the existing corral fence.
Use the DISTANCE OR LENGTH tool to label the length of each side of the addition to the corral.
Print and Problem Solve
Turn off the GRID.
Print your GeoGebra screen.
On the printout, explain two different ways that Ben could compute the area of his new, larger corral without having to count squares on a grid.