Surface Area of Rectangular Prisms

@BootstrapWorld

Surface Area of a prism

Open the Prism Starter File, click “Run” and type prism into the Interactions Area.

Notice that the faces and edges of the prism are labeled.

Faces are the shapes on the outside of the figure.

Edges are the line segments where the faces of solid figures meet in each of the three dimensions.

How would you describe the faces of this prism?

Surface Area of a prism

You are going to work through this file, reading the commented code for instructions. Be sure to save a copy of this file before leaving this page.

Take special note of line 22.

It reads (define lst (list front)) , which defines lst to be a list of values.

This list should include all of the faces of the prism. Right now it only includes front.

Building your prism

1. Open your saved file, and click “Run” to get an image of all the faces of the prism.
2. Print them, cut them out, and use them to help you find the surface area of the prism: the total area of the faces covering the outside of the prism.
3. Tape these faces together to build the prism!
4. Complete task 2 in your file, defining surface-area to calculate the area of the prism using width, length and height.

Synthesize

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• What code did you write to calculate the surface area?

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• How did building the prism help you to understand surface area?

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• How did writing the code for surface area help you to understand surface area?

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