Question

Ajalia's school needs to paint their climbing wall. The wall is in the shape of square pyramid. The side length of the base is 12 feet and the height is 8 feet. If they do not paint the base of the climbing wall, how much paint will they use?

Answer 1

The region to be painted is shown by the brighter coloured shapes, that is the triangles. (Note that they do not paint the base of the climbing wall, hence the square base in red is excluded).

The area of all four triangles is given as;

$\begin{gathered} \text{Area}=\frac{1}{2}bh \\ \text{Area}=\frac{1}{2}\times12\times8 \\ \text{Area}=6\times8 \\ \text{Area}=48ft^2 \end{gathered}$

Therefore, for 4 of such triangular shaped sides, they would need

48 times 4 square feet of paint

That means 48 x 4 = 192 ft^2

That is, they would need enough paint to cover 192 square feet of wall space