When people use the
word "perimeter" in everyday language,
they're talking about the boundary of some area. And when we talk about
perimeter in math, we're talking about
a related idea. But now we're not just
talking about the boundary. We're actually talking about
the length of the boundary. How far do you have to
go around the boundary to essentially go completely
around the figure, completely go around the area? So let's look at this first
triangle right over here. It has three sides. That's why it's a triangle. So what's its perimeter? Well, here, all the
sides are the same, so the perimeter
for this triangle is going to be 4 plus 4 plus
4, and whatever units this is. If this is 4 feet,
4 feet and 4 feet, then it would be 4 feet
plus 4 feet plus 4 feet is equal to 12 feet. Now, I encourage you
to now pause the video and figure out the parameters
of these three figures. Well, it's the exact same idea. We would just add the
lengths of the sides. So let's say that
these distances, let's say they're in meters. So let's say this is 3 meters,
and this is also 3 meters. This is a rectangle here,
so this is 5 meters. This is also 5 meters. So what is the perimeter of
this rectangle going to be? What is the distance
around the rectangle that bounds this area? Well, it's going to
be 3 plus 5 plus 3 plus 5, which is
equal to-- let's see, that's 3 plus 3 is 6,
plus 5 plus 5 is 10. So that is equal to 16. And if we're saying
these are all in meters, these are all in meters, then
it's going to be 16 meters. Now, what about this pentagon? Let's say that each
of these sides are 2-- and I'll make up a unit here. Let's say they're 2 gnus. That's a new unit of
distance that I've just invented-- 2 gnus. So what is the perimeter
of this pentagon in gnus? Well, it's 2 plus 2 plus
2 plus 2 plus 2 gnus. Or we're essentially
taking 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 sides. Each have a length of 2 gnus. So the perimeter here, we could
add 2 repeatedly five times. Or you could just say this
is 5 times 2 gnus, which is equal to 10 gnus,
where gnu is a completely made-up unit of length
that I just made up. Here we have a more irregular
polygon, but same exact idea. How would you figure
out its perimeter? Well, you just add up
the lengths of its sides. And here I'll just
do it unitless. I'll just assume that this
is some generic units. And here the perimeter
will be 1 plus 4 plus 2 plus 2-- let me
scroll over to the right a little bit-- plus 4 plus 6. So what is this
going to be equal to? 1 plus 4 is 5, plus 2 is 7,
plus 2 is 9, plus 4 is 13, plus 6 is 19. So this figure has
a perimeter of 19 in whatever units these
distances are actually given.