How to Calculate Surface Area of a Rectangle.

Learning how to calculate the surface area of a rectangle is a very important skill as it can be applied in many real-world situations such as: determining the number of tiles needed to cover the bottom of a swimming pool, the amount of wrapping paper needed to wrap a gift, or the amount of square footage you have in your backyard

Simply put a rectangle is a four sided quadrilateral whose all internal angles are right angles. Since a rectangle is a 2 – dimensional shape, so its surface area is the same as its area.

Formula to calculate the surface area of a rectangle.

Example 1:

Calculate the surface area of a rectangle whose length is 10 cm and width 5 cm.

Therefore, the surface area of the rectangle is 50 cm².

Example 2:

Calculate the the area of a rectangular piece of land whose length is 100 meters and width 50 meters.

Hence, the surface area of the rectangular piece of land is 5,000m².

Example 3:

Suppose you want to know if the carpet you bought will completely cover your room’s floor. If the length and width of the room is 16ft by 12 ft respectively and the area of the carpet is 150 square feet. Will the carpet completely cover the room?

Room.

Length 16 ft

Width 12 ft

Area = Length x Width

= 16 x 12

= 192 ft².

Carpet

Area = 150 ft²

The carpet is smaller than the room by 42ft² therefore it will not cover the room’s floor completely.