ShmoopTube

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Area, a la Shmoop. Have you ever wanted to travel to another

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dimension? What about traveling to… dramatic pause…

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the “third dimension?” It might sound like we’re jetting through

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the space-time continuum with rocket shoes… …but it really just means our world includes

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length, width, and depth. You know how it’s a big deal when some hit

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movie is shown in “3-D?” It’s because the 3-D experience makes the

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movie feel more like real life. However, considering that our entire lives

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are in 3-D, wouldn’t it actually be more interesting to experience “2-D?”

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“Area” is a mathematical term used to express the extent of a two-dimensional space,

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also known as a “plane.” In other words, area measures length and width,

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but not depth. So it occurs entirely in the second dimension.

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Area is measured in square units. Which could be square meters…

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…square miles, or any other sort of square measurement that strikes your fancy.

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For example, the area of Chicago is 237 square miles.

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And Calcutta, India is a whopping 729 square miles.

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Calcutta’s red light district alone is probably bigger than Chicago.

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If you don’t know what a “red light district” is, it’s an area with a ton of stoplights.

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Really bad traffic. Yeah… that’s it The calculation for area is very simple. You

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just multiply the length by the width. In this case, we multiply seven times five.

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The type of unit we’re using is actually irrelevant to the calculation.

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But since you desperately want us to commit, we’ll use furlongs.

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Seven furlongs times five furlongs equals an area of 35 furlongs.

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And there we have our area. That’s all there is to it.

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We hope you’ve enjoyed your trip to the second dimension. It’s a nice place to visit,

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but you probably wouldn’t want to live there.

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