Areas of Parallelograms

Areas of Parallelograms

To get the area of a parallelogram, we first draw a perpendicular line segment from one corner of the parallelogram to the opposite side. This is the height ( h) of the parallelogram.

Area of a parallelogram = lh

You may notice that lh is also the area of a rectangle with dimensions l and h. The diagram below will explain why. If we cut out the triangle ABC and add it to the other side (triangle DEF), you will have a rectangle with dimensions l and h that has the same area as the original parallelogram.

The following vdeo explains how the formula for the area of a parallelogram is obtained.

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