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Find the surface area of a square pyramid if the height of the triangles is 4 cm and the bottom edge is 2 cm. Please show or explain work.
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1. The triangles you are talking about are called the lateral faces in this case.
2. The height of the triangles is called the "slant height".
3. There are 4 lateral faces that are triangles with the base of 2 cm and the height of 4 cm.
The area of each such a triangle is = 4 .
The area of the four triangles is 4*4 = 16 .
It is the "lateral surface area".
4. We must account for the base area too.
It is 4*4 = 20 .
5. In all, the total surface area of the given pyramid is 16 + 20 = 36 .
On surface area of pyramids see the lessons
- Surface area of pyramids
- Solved problems on surface area of pyramids
- Overwiew of lessons on surface area of pyramids
in this site.
Also, you have this free of charge online textbook on Geometry
- GEOMETRY - YOUR ONLINE TEXTBOOK
in this site.
The referred lessons are the part of this online textbook under the topic "Surface area of 3D solid bodies".