My sister recently wanted help figuring out the inside surface of a pool--in order to figure out how many square feet of concrete should be needed to cover the inside of a pool. It took me an embarassingly long time to remember that all I need to do is figure out the area of five surfaces--the bottom, the front-inside wall, the rear-inside wall, the left-inside wall and the right-inside wall. Adding up the areas for all of these sides would be pretty easy, but figuring out the area for any of these surfaces would be a little harder than length x width if the given surface is not a square or rectangle. This article simplified the whole triangle and parallelogram solution along with using visualization techniques for remembering the general rectangle and square areas:
Figuring Out Area without memorizing formulae - Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math
I still haven't figured out the pool thing because of the curved connections between the sides and the bottom and also because the bottom surface will have a curved slope.
Sigh. . .Geometry. Why didn't I do my high school homework!?
Monday, November 21, 2005
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