Question

A triangular sail has a base length of 2.5 meters. The area of the sail is 3.75 square meters. How tall is the sail?

Answer 1

Hi, Idgagirls! :)

We can figure out how tall the sail is with the formula to the find the area of a triangle, which is:
$b*h/2$
$b=base$
$h=height$

Lets insert the information we already know:
$2.5h/2=3.75$
Solve for h.
Divide both sides by 2.5.
$(2.5h/2)/2.5=(3.75)/2.5$
Simplify.
$h/2=1.5$
Multiply both sides by 2.
$(h/2)*2=(1.5)*2$
h=3

The sail is 3 meters high.

Hope this helps.
-Benjamin

Answer 2

The area of a triangle is half the area of a rectangle. If you take the area of the sail, 3.75, and multiply it by 2 you get, 7.5. Since you want to find the height of the sail you would want to divide 7.5/2.5. This answer is 3. But since we earlier multiplied by 2 we need to now divide by 2. The answer would be: 1.5 meters