The triangular sail on Richard's boat needs to be replaced. Find the amount of fabric needed for a new sail that has a base of 16 meters and a height of 9 meters.

Question

anonymous · Answer

So my answer I got is 72, but is it square meters or just meters?

kainui · Answer

Meters measure distance, while square meters measure area. You can envision a bunch of squares coming together to make the amount of fabric he needs for the sail, but you can't imagine how long the fabric is in terms of distance. Meters by themselves count how far something is away while square meters count the area enclosed by lines, basically.