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Description:

Okay, so you know the length and width of your cutting board, but how do you find the area? Watch the video and find out. Then you can brag to all your friends about the size of your cutting board. (That's totally a thing.)

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Transcript

00:04

Area, a la Shmoop. Have you ever wanted to travel to another

00:10

dimension? What about traveling to… dramatic pause…

00:16

the “third dimension?” It might sound like we’re jetting through

00:24

the space-time continuum with rocket shoes… …but it really just means our world includes

00:29

length, width, and depth. You know how it’s a big deal when some hit

00:35

movie is shown in “3-D?” It’s because the 3-D experience makes the

00:39

movie feel more like real life. However, considering that our entire lives

00:45

are in 3-D, wouldn’t it actually be more interesting to experience “2-D?”

00:51

“Area” is a mathematical term used to express the extent of a two-dimensional space,

00:56

also known as a “plane.” In other words, area measures length and width,

01:03

but not depth. So it occurs entirely in the second dimension.

01:09

Area is measured in square units. Which could be square meters…

01:12

…square miles, or any other sort of square measurement that strikes your fancy.

01:17

For example, the area of Chicago is 237 square miles.

01:24

And Calcutta, India is a whopping 729 square miles.

01:28

Calcutta’s red light district alone is probably bigger than Chicago.

01:28

If you don’t know what a “red light district” is, it’s an area with a ton of stoplights.

01:29

Really bad traffic. Yeah… that’s it The calculation for area is very simple. You

01:35

just multiply the length by the width. In this case, we multiply seven times five.

01:40

The type of unit we’re using is actually irrelevant to the calculation.

01:47

But since you desperately want us to commit, we’ll use furlongs.

01:50

Seven furlongs times five furlongs equals an area of 35 furlongs.

01:55

And there we have our area. That’s all there is to it.

02:01

We hope you’ve enjoyed your trip to the second dimension. It’s a nice place to visit,

02:05

but you probably wouldn’t want to live there.

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