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If I print this page which shape will require the more yellow ink?
Investigate the properties of quadrilaterals which can be drawn with a circle just touching each side and another circle just touching each vertex.
Four quadrants are drawn centred at the vertices of a square . Find the area of the central region bounded by the four arcs.
Prove that the area of a quadrilateral is given by half the product of the lengths of the diagonals multiplied by the sine of the angle between the diagonals.
The diagonals of a trapezium divide it into four parts. Can you create a trapezium where three of those parts are equal in area?
If the base of a rectangle is increased by 10% and the area is unchanged, by what percentage (exactly) is the width decreased by ?
A trapezium is divided into four triangles by its diagonals. Suppose the two triangles containing the parallel sides have areas a and b, what is the area of the trapezium?
Can you find a general rule for finding the areas of equilateral triangles drawn on an isometric grid?
Manufacturers need to minimise the amount of material used to make their product. What is the best cross-section for a gutter?
Triangle ABC is right angled at A and semi circles are drawn on all three sides producing two 'crescents'. Show that the sum of the areas of the two crescents equals the area of triangle ABC.
A farmer has a field which is the shape of a trapezium as illustrated below. To increase his profits he wishes to grow two different crops. To do this he would like to divide the field into two. . . .
Can you choose your units so that a cube has the same numerical value for it volume, surface area and total edge length?
A circle is inscribed in a triangle which has side lengths of 8, 15 and 17 cm. What is the radius of the circle?
Given a square ABCD of sides 10 cm, and using the corners as centres, construct four quadrants with radius 10 cm each inside the square. The four arcs intersect at P, Q, R and S. Find the. . . .
Six circular discs are packed in different-shaped boxes so that the discs touch their neighbours and the sides of the box. Can you put the boxes in order according to the areas of their bases?
Have a go at creating these images based on circles. What do you notice about the areas of the different sections?
A point P is selected anywhere inside an equilateral triangle. What can you say about the sum of the perpendicular distances from P to the sides of the triangle? Can you prove your conjecture?
Three rods of different lengths form three sides of an enclosure with right angles between them. What arrangement maximises the area
Which has the greatest area, a circle or a square inscribed in an isosceles, right angle triangle?
A square of area 40 square cms is inscribed in a semicircle. Find the area of the square that could be inscribed in a circle of the same radius.
Draw two circles, each of radius 1 unit, so that each circle goes through the centre of the other one. What is the area of the overlap?
Bluey-green, white and transparent squares with a few odd bits of shapes around the perimeter. But, how many squares are there of each type in the complete circle? Study the picture and make. . . .
Can you show that you can share a square pizza equally between two people by cutting it four times using vertical, horizontal and diagonal cuts through any point inside the square?
A circle with the radius of 2.2 centimetres is drawn touching the sides of a square. What area of the square is NOT covered by the circle?
A red square and a blue square overlap so that the corner of the red square rests on the centre of the blue square. Show that, whatever the orientation of the red square, it covers a quarter of the. . . .
Do you know how to find the area of a triangle? You can count the squares. What happens if we turn the triangle on end? Press the button and see. Try counting the number of units in the triangle now. . . .
ABC and DEF are equilateral triangles of side 3 and 4 respectively. Construct an equilateral triangle whose area is the sum of the area of ABC and DEF.
Polygons drawn on square dotty paper have dots on their perimeter (p) and often internal (i) ones as well. Find a relationship between p, i and the area of the polygons.
Can you find the area of a parallelogram defined by two vectors?
Can you maximise the area available to a grazing goat?
Points P, Q, R and S each divide the sides AB, BC, CD and DA respectively in the ratio of 2 : 1. Join the points. What is the area of the parallelogram PQRS in relation to the original rectangle?
It's easy to work out the areas of most squares that we meet, but what if they were tilted?
Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?
Prove that a triangle with sides of length 5, 5 and 6 has the same area as a triangle with sides of length 5, 5 and 8. Find other pairs of non-congruent isosceles triangles which have equal areas.
If you have only 40 metres of fencing available, what is the maximum area of land you can fence off?
What is the same and what is different about these circle questions? What connections can you make?
In the four examples below identical squares of side one unit contain some circles shaded blue. In which of the four examples is the shaded area greatest?
Straight lines are drawn from each corner of a square to the mid points of the opposite sides. Express the area of the octagon that is formed at the centre as a fraction of the area of the square.
How can you change the area of a shape but keep its perimeter the same? How can you change the perimeter but keep the area the same?
Investigate the different ways of cutting a perfectly circular pie into equal pieces using exactly 3 cuts. The cuts have to be along chords of the circle (which might be diameters).
Which is a better fit, a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole?
It is possible to dissect any square into smaller squares. What is the minimum number of squares a 13 by 13 square can be dissected into?
Take a sheet of A4 paper and place it in landscape format. Fold up the bottom left corner to the top so the double thickness is a 45,45,90 triangle. Fold up the bottom right corner to meet the. . . .
In this problem we are faced with an apparently easy area problem, but it has gone horribly wrong! What happened?
How have "Warmsnug" arrived at the prices shown on their windows? Which window has been given an incorrect price?
What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?
At the corner of the cube circular arcs are drawn and the area enclosed shaded. What fraction of the surface area of the cube is shaded? Try working out the answer without recourse to pencil and. . . .
Seven small rectangular pictures have one inch wide frames. The frames are removed and the pictures are fitted together like a jigsaw to make a rectangle of length 12 inches. Find the dimensions of. . . .
This rectangle is cut into five pieces which fit exactly into a triangular outline and also into a square outline where the triangle, the rectangle and the square have equal areas.
I'm thinking of a rectangle with an area of 24. What could its perimeter be?