## anonymous 5 years ago if the sides of a square are lengthened by 8cm, the area becomes 169cm^2. Find the length of a side of the original square. The length of a side of the original square is ..... cm?

1. anonymous

169 is the square of 13

2. anonymous

13-8=5

3. anonymous

i didnt really understand the whole cm^2 thing to figure it out

4. anonymous

that just means area. area is given in terms of square units

5. anonymous

i say don't worry about it

6. anonymous

you wouldn't say the area of a table top is 10 feet. that is a linear measure. you could say it is 10 square feet

7. anonymous

the ^2 pertains the the letters, not the numbers

8. anonymous

yeah what ecin said

9. anonymous

follow this, Let x be the original side A=169 A=s^2 169=(x+8)^2, we can extract the square root of both sides 13=x+8 x=13-8 x=5 cm , this is the original side

10. anonymous

so u would say for 169cm^2 , 169 square feet. so u just squared the 169? then - from 8

11. anonymous

satellite wait till she got to volume

12. anonymous

cubic units

13. anonymous

if you had something that's 16 sq ft and it is square in shape

14. anonymous

no, square root of 169 is 13.

15. anonymous

then each side would be 4, .. and the area is 4^2

16. anonymous

actually i did not square the 169. i thought of a number whose square is 169

17. anonymous

sry pat that is what I meant not square feet

18. anonymous

in other words $\sqrt{169}=13$

19. anonymous

yeah, but that is having the same concept

20. anonymous

but that's only the case of a truly square shape, for now you should just ignore the sq units and just put it on the answer as a definition

21. anonymous

it is okay...

22. anonymous

l*w= A * some^2 unit

23. anonymous

yeah well i hope to not take anymore math after this class, keeps me stresses grrrr..lol

24. anonymous

25. anonymous

a cm * b cm = a* b cm^2, not cm^2 will always be there, so take it as a definition

26. anonymous

in my case, i do pay attention because its' not always the same. I'm in engineering

27. anonymous

just follow what i did awarr28

28. anonymous

oh ok ecin, at least I'm taking notes, but half the time I have to keep coming back to ask because i still cant figure it out...lol

29. anonymous

30. anonymous

yes I wrote that down pat, thank you all for all your help

31. anonymous

you are welcome^_^

32. anonymous

say you have tiled floors and they are all 1 feet

33. anonymous

or mess around with the little squares in graph papers think about them as square feets

34. anonymous

ok, I thank you all for your help.

35. anonymous

1 feet by 2 feet = 2 squares

36. anonymous

its like you are shading every little box or tile you count

37. anonymous

oh ok I see what your saying

38. anonymous

2 feet by 3 feet are six boxes

39. anonymous

and that's the area

40. anonymous

dont' worry about why, but just put it at the end ft^2

41. anonymous

so 2 feet by 6 feet would be 12 boxes right?

42. anonymous

yea

43. anonymous

;)

44. anonymous

you can also think about it like this "clear the area"

45. anonymous

you don't want nothing or nobody in that space

46. anonymous

a perimiter on the other hand is just like a gate.. is a measurement of the outside

47. anonymous

gotcha