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Area of equilateral triangle

Finding the formula for the area of an equilateral triangle with side s. Created by Sal Khan.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user Joshua Hoeflich
    Couldn't we use the trig functions to find this too? We have all the angles, so we could have found the height using one of the sides of the Triangle, then plugged that into the area formula.
    (31 votes)
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  • old spice man green style avatar for user Adam Gerwing
    what if the equalateral triangles has unequal sides?
    (0 votes)
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  • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user Noah Peterson
    How do you figure out the height of an equilateral triangle?
    (3 votes)
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    • mr pants teal style avatar for user Arindam Bhattacharya
      First draw the height - due to the symmetry of equilateral triangles, it will start at the midpoint of whichever side you choose to start from, and end at the opposite vertex (point/corner). In effect you will split the equilateral triangle into two congruent right triangles.

      Now consider one of these two right triangles by itself. If the equilateral triangle has sides of length x, then the hypotenuse of our right triangle will also be x. We also know that the side opposite the 30 degree angle has length x/2, since we split that side of the triangle in half to construct this right triangle. Since you know two of the sides of a right triangle, you can use the Pythagorean theorem to find the length of the 3rd.

      (x/2)^2 + m^2 = x^2
      x^2/4 + m^2 = x^2
      m^2 = (3*x^2)/4
      m = (x*sqrt(3))/2

      Where m is the height of the right triangle, which is equal to the height of the equilateral triangle. Incidentally, this derivation also proves the shortcut for the ratio of the sides in a 30-60-90 triangle, since the effect of cutting an equilateral triangle in half is to create 2 30-60-90 triangles.
      (5 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Alexandra Andrejczuk
    Isn't it easier to just multiply the 1/2 with the base and height rather than to just go through all of those square roots because he lost me there
    (1 vote)
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    • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user Barry Desborough
      We don't know what the height is without working it out. Pythagoras' theorem says that in a right triangle, the area of a square drawn on the longest side (the hypotenuse) is equal in area to the areas of the two squares drawn on the other two sides (the legs), added together. The square on the side with length s/2 is 1/4 of the area of the square on the side with length s, so a square on the height must be 3/4 of it. This tells us that the height is s times the square root of 3/4, which is equal to s times a half of the square root of three.
      (6 votes)
  • male robot donald style avatar for user ErickP
    what does he mean by 30,60,90 video
    (3 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user Joshua Williams
    Why is the square root of 3 used? I Don't see how it came up. I don't understand that bit. Help me please.
    (1 vote)
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    • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user Just Keith
      The √3 comes from a special property that applies only to 30°-60°-90° right triangles. For just that type of triangle, if the hypotenuse is h, then the shortest side (the side opposite the 30°) will have a length of ½ h. The second longest leg, the one opposite the 60° will have a length of ½ h√3 .

      Another way of saying the same thing is that the ratio of the sides of a 30°-60°-90° are 1L : L√3 : 2L where L is the length of the shortest side, the side opposite 30°. L√3 is the length of the second shortest side and 2L is the length of the hypotenuse.

      If you cannot remember this, don't worry, you can always do solve it with the usual sin, cos, tan functions.
      (3 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user tbodden
    One of the sides of an equilateral triangle is 22cm and the height is 16 cm what is the area
    (1 vote)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user Mahdi
    Can you use the herons formula for equilateral triangles?
    (1 vote)
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    • starky sapling style avatar for user ∞ infinite.prism ∞
      Yes, but I would suggest using the formula Sal gave:

      3s² / 4

      where 's' is any one side of an equilateral triangle.

      The reason why is because it saves a lot of time and effort. In fact, I have never heard of Heron's formula until now, but the formula I provided above is one of the easiest formulas to memorize AND use in my opinion. However, you can always use the Heron's formula if that is easier for you.
      (3 votes)
  • piceratops sapling style avatar for user Skysilver_Gaming
    Isn't the area of a triangle formula just "base x height over two"? If so, why do we need a specific formula for equilateral triangles?
    (2 votes)
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    • mr pink red style avatar for user andrewp18
      It's useful if we don't know the altitude length of the equilateral triangle and we only have its side length. From the perspective of math competitions, you can calculate equilateral triangle area with this video's formula many times faster than the standard bh/2.
      (2 votes)
  • female robot ada style avatar for user Archita
    I really dont get that, is 30 a random number:(
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

Let's say that this triangle right over here is equilateral, which means all of its sides have the same length. And let's say that that length is s. What I want to do in this video is come up with a way of figuring out the area of this equilateral triangle, as a function of s. And to do that, I'm just going to split this equilateral in two. I'm just going to drop an altitude from this top vertex right over here. This is going to be perpendicular to the base. And it's also going to bisect this top angle. So this angle is going to be equal to that angle. And we showed all of this in the video where we proved the relationships between the sides of a 30-60-90 triangle. Well, in a regular equilateral triangle, all of the angles are 60 degrees. So this one right over here is going to be 60 degrees, let me do that in a different color. This one down here is going to be 60 degrees. This one down here is going to be 60 degrees. And then this one up here is 60 degrees, but we just split it in two. So this angle is going to be 30 degrees. And then this angle is going to be 30 degrees. And then the other thing that we know is that this altitude right over here also will bisect this side down here. So that this length is equal to that length. And we showed all of this a little bit more rigorously on that 30-60-90 triangle video. But what this tells us is well, if this entire length was s, because all three sides are going to be s, it's an equilateral triangle, then each of these, so this part right over here, is going to be s/2. And if this length is s/2, we can use what we know about 30-60-90 triangles to figure out this side right over here. So to figure out what the actual altitude is. And the reason why I care about the altitude is because the area of a triangle is 1/2 times the base times the height, or times the altitude. So this is s/2, the shortest side. The side opposite the 30 degree angle is s/2. Then the side opposite the 60 degree angle is going to be square root of 3 times that. So it's going to be square root of 3 s over 2. And we know that because the ratio of the sides of a 30-60-90 triangle, if the side opposite the 30 degree side is 1, then the side opposite the 60 degree side is going to be square root of 3 times that. And the side opposite the 90 degree side, or the hypotenuse, is going to be 2 times that. So it's 1 to square root of 3 to 2. So this is the shortest side right over here. That's the side opposite the 30 degree side. The side opposite the 60 degree side is going to be square root of 3 times this. So square root of 3 s over 2. So now we just need to figure out what the area of this triangle is, using area of our triangle is equal to 1/2 times the base, times the height of the triangle. Well, what is the base of the triangle? Well, the entire base of the triangle right over here is s. So that is going to be s. And what is the height of the triangle? Well, we just figured that out. It is the square root of 3 times s over 2. And we just multiply that out, and we get, let's see, in the numerator you get a square root of 3 times 1 times s times s. That is the square root of 3 times s squared. And the denominator, we have a 2 times a 2. All of that over 4. So for example, if you have an equilateral triangle where each of the sides was 1, then its area would be square root of 3 over 4. If you had an equilateral triangle where each of the sides were 2, then this would be 2 squared over 4, which is just 1. So it would just be square root of 3. So we just found out a generalizable way to figure out the area of an equilateral triangle.