Question

For a medal and fan, find the approximate side length of a square game board with an area of 160 in^2 to the nearest whole inch.

Answer 1

What is the area of a square?

Answer 2

A = a^2

Answer 3

Correct.
If the side length is a, then the area is a^2.

Answer 4

We know the area, and we know the formula, so we can write:

a^2 = A

We are given that A = 160 in.^2, so we replace A with 160 in.^2 to get

a^2 = 160 in.^2

Now we need to find a.

Answer 5

That makes sense

Answer 6

Yes, believe it or not, math does make sense.

We have the square of a, but we want a, so we take the square root of both sides.

\(a^2 = 160~in.^2\)

\(\sqrt{a^2} = \sqrt{160 ~in.^2}\)

\(a^2 = \sqrt{160 ~in.^2}\)

Now you need to take the square root of 160.
Do you have a calculator with square root?

Answer 7

Square root of 160 is 12.650, rounded

Answer 8

Since we need the side length rounded to the nearest whole number, we don't even need a calculator.

Let's start with 10^2 which we know is 100.
Then
11^2 = 121 too small
12^2 = 144 too small
13^2 = 169 too big

The square root of 160 must be between 12 and 13, but closer to 13 than to 12.

Answer 9

Right