A rectangle has length 6 cm and width 4 cm. What is its area?

A rectangle has length 6 cm and width 4 cm. What is its area?

• A. 20
• B. 24
• C. 16
• D. 28

Answer: (B)

Area measures how much space is inside a rectangle. To find it, multiply the length by the width. With a length of 6 cm and a width of 4 cm, the area is 6 × 4 = 24 square centimeters. You can picture it as filling the rectangle with 1 cm by 1 cm squares: there are six rows of four squares, or four columns of six squares, which also gives 24. The other numbers come from using different side lengths (for example, 4 by 4 would give 16, 5 by 4 would give 20, and 7 by 4 would give 28), so they don’t match the given dimensions.

Area measures how much space is inside a rectangle. To find it, multiply the length by the width. With a length of 6 cm and a width of 4 cm, the area is 6 × 4 = 24 square centimeters. You can picture it as filling the rectangle with 1 cm by 1 cm squares: there are six rows of four squares, or four columns of six squares, which also gives 24. The other numbers come from using different side lengths (for example, 4 by 4 would give 16, 5 by 4 would give 20, and 7 by 4 would give 28), so they don’t match the given dimensions.