Exercise 1 Page 378

We want to find the area of the triangle in square inches. Notice that the base and the height are given in centimeters. Let's convert them to inches first and then we can determine the area.

Converting to Inches

We can use a conversion factor to convert the units. Notice that both the base and the height are equal to $2$ cm, so we just have to convert $2$ cm to inches. To cancel out centimeters, we will use the conversion factor $\frac{1\text{ in}}{2.54\text{ cm}}.$ $2$ centimeters is approximately $0.79$ inches.

Calculating the Area

To calculate the area of a triangle we can use the following formula. Here $b$ is the length of the base and $h$ is the height. We already know that both base and height are equal $0.79\text{ in}.$ Let's substitute these values in the formula. The area of the triangle is approximately $0.31{\text{ in}}^2.$