Question

What is the area of a rectangle with sides `"50 cm"` and `"29 m"`?

Answer 1

The area of the rectangle is `"14.5 m"^2"` or `"145000 cm"^2"`.

Explanation:

For a rectangle:

`A=lxxw`,

where:

`A` is area, `l` is length, and `w` is width.

Since the length is given in meters, and the width is given in centimeters, we have to make the dimensions the same. I'm going to convert centimeters to meters.

`"1 m"` `=` `"100 cm"`

`50color(red)cancel(color(black)("cm"))xx(1"m")/(100color(red)cancel(color(black)("cm")))="0.5 m"`

Plug in the values for length and width and solve for area.

`A="29 m"xx"0.5 m"="14.5 m"^2"`

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Area in centimeters

Convert meters to centimeters.

`29color(red)cancel(color(black)("m"))xx(100"cm")/(1color(red)cancel(color(black)("m")))="2900 cm"`

`A="2900 cm"xx"50 cm"="145000 cm"^2"`