The area of a parallelogram is equal to:

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Multiple Choice

The area of a parallelogram is equal to:

The area of a parallelogram comes from multiplying its base by the perpendicular height. The base is any side you choose to call the base, and the height is the distance between that base and the opposite side measured at a right angle. If you drop a perpendicular from the top base down to the bottom base, you can imagine rearranging the parallelogram into a rectangle with the same base length and the same height; that rectangle has area base × height, so the parallelogram does too. This works contrasts with the other options: dividing by 2 would give the area of a triangle, adding base and height isn’t a valid area formula, and using width instead of base would only be appropriate if you happen to treat that dimension as the base, but the standard, meaningful measure is base times the perpendicular height.

The area of a parallelogram comes from multiplying its base by the perpendicular height. The base is any side you choose to call the base, and the height is the distance between that base and the opposite side measured at a right angle. If you drop a perpendicular from the top base down to the bottom base, you can imagine rearranging the parallelogram into a rectangle with the same base length and the same height; that rectangle has area base × height, so the parallelogram does too.

This works contrasts with the other options: dividing by 2 would give the area of a triangle, adding base and height isn’t a valid area formula, and using width instead of base would only be appropriate if you happen to treat that dimension as the base, but the standard, meaningful measure is base times the perpendicular height.

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