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Comparing areas of plots of land

Sal finds area of two rectangles to solve a word problem. Created by Sal Khan.

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Video transcript

Diya is looking to buy a plot of land to build her home on. She finally narrows her search to two plots that both have good locations. The plot at 314159 Apple Lane has a width of 30 meters and a length of 40 meters. The plot at 11235 Fibonacci Drive has a width of 50 meters and a length of 20 meters. They are each being sold for $36,000. Which one is a better deal? So they're the same price, and they're in comparable neighborhoods. So really, the better deal is the one that actually gets me more area. So I encourage you to pause the video and think about, which one of these am I getting more land for the same amount of money? Well, to think about how much land I'm getting, I'm really thinking about, how much space is that plot taking up? Or I'm really thinking about, what is the area of each of these plots? And we've already figured out that you can calculate the area of a rectangle by multiplying its length times its width. So the area of Apple Lane is 40 meters times 30 meters, which is equal to-- 40 times 3 is 120. 40 times 30 is 1,200. And then it's meters times meters. Or you can view this as square meters, 1,200 square meters. Now let's think about what the area of the plot at Fibonacci Drive is. So its length is 20. Its width is 50. So here the area is 20 meters times 50 meters, which is equal to-- 20 times 5 is 100. 20 times 50 is 1,000 square meters. So it's pretty clear when you calculate the area that Apple Lane, you're getting more square meters than you would get at Fibonacci Drive. And literally, when we say 1,200 square meters, that means if you were to put a 1 meter by 1 meter square here-- so a really small one like that-- then you could fit 1,200 of these on this plot of land, while you could only fit 1,000 of them on this plot of land-- of these 1 meter by 1 meter squares. So we have a larger area, same neighborhood or comparable neighborhood for the same price. I would go with Apple Lane being the better deal.