Question

A regular hexagon has six sides of equal length. If a regular hexagon is made from a 36-inch-long string, what is the length of each side?

Answer 1

`6` inches

Explanation:

We have a regular hexagon and so there are six equal-length sides. We use a string to map out that hexagon - the string is 36 inches long. How long is each side?

We know each side will use up `1/6` of the total length of the string and knowing that, we can find the side length in a few different ways.

One way is to say:

`36xx1/6=36/6=6`

Another way is to do a ratio:

`"length of one side"/"length of entire hexagon"="one side"/"number of sides to a hexagon"`

`x/36=1/6`

and then cross multiply:

`6x=36`

`x=6`