Perimeter, Surface area and volume

Jonathan Lam April 16, 2013

Perimeter

The perimeter of a polygon is often trivial. You just add up all the sides. Sometimes, you will be given the perimeter and asked to nd a side. Form an equation and solve for the unknown. The only formula you should need for perimeter is 2r for the perimeter of a circle, called the circumference. Solving year 10 perimeter problem solving questions are often trivial. Provided you know the properties of the shapes, you would be ne.
2 Area

For squares, rectangles, and parallelograms, the area is given by A = bh, where b is the base and h is the perpendicular height. The proof is left as an exercise to the reader.
2.1 Triangles

The simplest way to nd the area of a triangle is using 1 A = bh 2 where b is the base and h is the perpendicular height (altitude) If given two sides, a and b and an included angle, C , the area is 1 A = ab sin C 2 If only given three sides (or the perimeter and the ratio of the sides), you can use Heron's formula. The semiperimeter of a polygon is half its perimeter. The area of a triangle with sides a; b; c and semiperimeter s is given by
A=
2.2 Circle

s( s

a)(s b)(s c)

The area of a circle is

A = r2

Areas of sectors involve nding a fraction of the area of the circle. For example, a sector with 90 between the radii (the central angle) is clearly a quarter of a circle (and hence the name quadrant). To nd the 1 r 2 area of this, we nd 4 For a sector with central angle , the area is
A=
3 Trapezium

360

r2

For any shape with two parallel sides with lengths a; b and the perpendicular distance between the parallel sides (perpendicular height of trapezium) of length h, the area is 1 A = h(a + b) 2 1

Regular polygon

The area of a regular polygon is found by nding the areas of the isosceles triangles, where the base of the triangle is one of the sides of the polygon, and the remaining vertex is the centre of the circle inscribed in the polygon (or the point where diagonals meet). Hence, the area is
A=

1 ap 2

where a is the apothem and p is the perimeter. (The apothem is the line from the centre to the midpoint of the side.)
5 Pick's theorem

If we have a shape on a square grid, with all lines straight, no ones intersecting, and all vertices on the grid points, then we can nd the area using Pick's theorem.

1 2 where i is the number of interior points and b is the number of points on the boundary.
A=i+

Figure 1: Green dots show boundary points (b = 8) and red dots show interior points (i = 7). Hence the 8 ) 1 = 10 units2 area is 7 + ( 2

Surface area

The surface area is found by adding the areas of its faces. The only formulas you really need to know is
SA = 4r2

which is used for SA of a spheres, and

SA = r2 + rl

for SA of a cone, where r is the radius and l is the slant height. rl specically refers to the curved part, so keep this in mind when you have open cones, or compound shapes. The only other shape (that you encounter in year 10) that has a curve is a cylinder. The surface area for this is the area of the two circles and the rectangle that connects the circles. One side of the rectangle is the height, and the other is the circumference of the circle. The formula for this is left as an exercise to the reader.
7 Volumes

For prisms, you nd the area of the base (or the cross section) and multiply it by the height. For pyramids, 1. you do the same thing, but you also multiply it by 3
Vprism = Abase Vpyramid =

1 A h 3 base 4r3 Vsphere = 3 2

Similarity

A1 = A2 V1 = V2

 S 2
1

 S 3
1

S2

S2