Question
Use the image to answer the question.
An illustration shows a trapezoid with shorter base of length 36 and the opposite longer side of length 48. The legs on the left and right sides are of length 21. The perpendicular height from the bottom left vertex to the longer side is 18. The length between the top left vertex of the longer side and the point where the height meets the longer side is labeled 6. The height is shown in a dashed line.
Compose a rectangle to help find the area of a trapezoid-shaped tabletop in square inches. What is the area of the tabletop?
(1 point)
To find the area of the trapezoid-shaped tabletop, we can first create a rectangle by adding another trapezoid below the original trapezoid. This new trapezoid has the same dimensions as the original trapezoid but is flipped and placed below it. The height of the new trapezoid is also 18 inches.
Thus, the total width of the rectangle is 36 + 48 = 84 inches and the height is 18 inches.
Therefore, the area of the rectangle (and consequently the trapezoid-shaped tabletop) is:
Area = width x height
Area = 84 inches x 18 inches
Area = 1512 square inches
Therefore, the area of the trapezoid-shaped tabletop is 1512 square inches.