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Measuring rectangles with different unit squares

Sal finds area of a rectangle with different sized units. Created by Sal Khan.

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Video transcript

- What we're going to do in this video is look at two rectangles that have the exact same area, and we're going to measure each of them with a different square unit. So this top unit right over here, this is a square foot. So that means its height is one foot and it's width right here is one foot. Now, this is square unit over here, this is completely made up. And I'm going to call this a voot or a voot. So, this right over here is one voot and this over here, the width, is one voot. So this entire thing is a one square voot, while this top one, of course, is one square voot. Now, let's measure the top rectangle in terms of square feet, and let's measure the bottom rectangle in terms of square, I guess I could say veet, (chuckles) all right. So first the top rectangle. So we have one, two square feet, three square feet, four square feet, five square feet, and then we have, looks like six square feet. And then we're gonna need to have another six square feet down here. So that's seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12. So when I tile these square feet onto our original rectangle, it looks like we have 12 square feet. And so I could write it's area like this, 12 square feet. Now what about this one in terms of veet? You could have a square voot or many square veet. Let me do the same exercise here. That's one square voot, this is two square veet, I could say, and then this is three square veet. So the same area could either be 12 square feet or it could be three square veet. And I want you to think about whether that makes sense. Think about how many square feet would make up one square voot. In fact, we can figure that out on our own right over here. So that's one square foot, this is two square feet, this is three square feet, and then four square feet. So it looks like four square feet make up one square voot. And so think about, does it make sense that three square veet is the same thing as 12 square feet?