Exploring area
Exploring area

Is there a quick way to work out the area of squares on dotty grids?

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Areas on a grid

The shapes below all have two dots inside and six dots round the edge. What do you notice about the areas of the shapes?

Now, draw some shapes of your own.

Is there an easy way to work out the area of a shape if you know the number of dots on the edge and the number of dots inside?

Tools
An appearing act

Take an 8 by 8 square cut it like below, and rearrange the pieces to make a 13 by 5 rectangle

It seems we can use the same pieces to make two shapes with different areas! Can you explain why?

Can you perform this 'magic trick' by splitting squares of other sizes in a similar way?

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