Today we talked about area and perimeter of a parallelogram. We talked about the formulas, how you label the units and when we can use area and perimeter in everyday life.
Area = base x height
Perimeter = You just always add up all the sides.
One of the questions in class was, Why do you square the units when finding area and do nothing to the units when finding perimeter?
Some of the boys talked about how you are multiplying like units together and that is why you square them in area. You add in perimeter so you do not need to do anything to the units in perimeter.
One boy made a connection to a two dimensional plane and squaring the units in area. He talked about how a plane is two dimension and you only have length and a width, or a base and a height. You have no depth. Therefore, you need to square your units. You have two units you are multiplying together. Then he talked about how perimeter means you are going around a plane. Lines make up planes and lines are one dimension. Therefore you do not need to do anything with the units. The boys really liked that way of looking at area and perimeter.
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