What is Area? | Definition vs Origin

It is defined as space occupied by any of the flat shapes or any of the surfaces of an object. The region of a figure is the number of unit squares that cover the outside of a figure. The area is estimated in square units, for example, square centimetres, square feet, square inches, and so on.

Here are some squares with their areas, with unit squares of the side, only 1 cm each. These are measured in cm squares.

Here the area of all the shapes can be measured in meter squares as well as in square inches.

Key Takeaways

1. The area measures the amount of space inside a two-dimensional shape or surface.
2. The area is measured in square units, such as square meters or square feet.
3. The formula for calculating the area of a rectangle is length multiplied by width. In contrast, the formula for calculating the area of a circle is pi multiplied by the square of the radius.

Origin

The word ‘area’ originated from the Latin ‘area’. It means a vacant piece of ground level. Afterwards, the origin of these words fled further to an irregular derivation of an area as a specific measure of the room contained inside a set of boundaries.

We frequently discover the area of the room floor to decide the size of the carpet to be purchased. Covering the floor with tiles, covering the divider with paint or backdrop or building a pool are different models where the area is figured.

All of the simple and common shapes and also polygons have their formulas for calculating their areas. Here are all the formulas of 2-D shapes.

Not all the figures in real life are exactly squares, rectangles or triangles. So, when we have to find the area of a figure with more than one shape, we have to sum up all the areas of all the shapes which are making the figure.

There is also a term in Area, ‘Surface Area.’

It is the area of the outside surface of any solid or a 3-D shape known as Surface Area. For example, a Prism of a rectangular shape has 6 rectangular bases and lateral faces. In this way, the total surface area is the area of all 6 square shapes.