If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

Classifying shapes by line and angles types

Sal categorizes shapes based on their sides and angles.   Created by Sal Khan.

Want to join the conversation?

Video transcript

Which side is perpendicular to side BC? So BC is this line segment right over here. And for another segment to be perpendicular to it, perpendicular just means that the two segments need to intersect at a right angle, or at a 90-degree angle. And we see that BC intersects AB at a 90-degree angle. This symbol right over here represents a 90-degree, or a right angle. So we just have to find side AB or BA. And that's right over here. Side AB is perpendicular to side BC. Let's do a few more of these. Put the triangles into the correct categories, so this right over here. So let's see. Let's think about our categories. Right triangles-- so that means it has a 90-degree angle in it. Obtuse triangles-- that means it has an angle larger than 90 degrees in it. Acute triangles-- that means all three angles are less than 90 degrees. So this one has a 90-degree angle. It has a right angle right over here. So this is a right triangle. This one right over here, all of these angles are less than 90 degrees, just eyeballing it. So this is going to be an acute-- that's going to be an acute triangle. I'll put it under acute triangles right over there. Then this one over here, this angle up here, this is-- and we can assume that these actually are drawn to scale, this is more open than a 90-degree angle. This is an obtuse angle right over here. It's going to be more than 90 degrees. So this is an obtuse triangle. Now, this one over here, all of them seem acute. None of them even seem to be a right angle. So I would put this again into acute-- acute triangles. This one here clearly has a right angle. It's labeled as such. So we'll throw it right over here. And then this one, this angle right over here is clearly even larger. It has a larger measure than a right angle. So this angle right over here is more than 90 degrees. It's going to be an obtuse angle. So we will throw it into obtuse-- obtuse triangles. So we got two in each of these. And let's check our answer. We got it right.