Areas of Parallelograms and Triangles

Introduction

In Chapter 5, you have seen that the study of Geometry, originated with the measurement of earth (lands) in the process of recasting boundaries of the fields and dividing them into appropriate parts. For example, a farmer Budhia had a triangular field and she wanted to divide it equally among her two daughters and one son. Without actually calculating the area of the field, she just divided one side of the triangular field into three equal parts and joined the two points of division to the opposite vertex. In this way, the field was divided into three parts and she gave one part to each of her children. Do you think that all the three parts so obtained by her were, in fact, equal in area? To get answers to this type of questions and other related problems, there is a need to have a relook at areas of plane figures, which you have already studied in earlier classes.