How do you use the area of a triangle to solve for b?

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How do you use the area of a triangle to solve for b?

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Answer 1 · 2018-03-17T03:42:02

Just to confirm, what you mean "b" is base, right?

If so, then the equation for solving the area for the triangle is $b h \frac{1}{2}$ $bh1/2$ . And then you plug in the numbers from your question.

Explanation:

On this website:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/basic-geo/basic-geo-area-and-perimeter/area-triangle/a/area-of-triangle

It explains that a rectangle is composed of 2 triangles.

Just to refresh your mind, $b \cdot h$ $b*h$ (or $L \cdot W$ $L*W$ ) is the area of a rectangle or square. And if you draw it out, a triangle is half of a rectangle basically.

Therefore, $b \cdot h \cdot \frac{1}{2}$ $b*h*1/2$ is the area of a triangle.

Now to the next part, where you asked of how to apply it on finding the base, if the question didn't prove a number of the base for you, you just do the same thing.

Since I'm bad at explaining, I'm going to give you 2 examples so you will understand:

Ex. 1: A triangle has an area of 16 cm and a height of 4 cm. How long is the base?
$\Rightarrow$ $=>$
Area (triangle) = $b \cdot h \cdot \frac{1}{2}$ $b * h * 1/2$
$16 = b \cdot 4 \cdot (\frac{1}{2})$ $16 = b * 4 * (1/2)$
$32 = b \cdot 4$ $32 = b * 4$ $\Rightarrow$ $=>$ [ times 2 on both sides]
$b = 8$ $b = 8$ $\Rightarrow$ $=>$ [divided by 4 on both sides]

Hope this helps!!

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How do you use the area of a triangle to solve for b?

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