#One half times base one plus base 2 how to#

In fact, this value is crucial when we discuss how to calculate the area of a trapezoid and therefore gets its own dedicated section.

The height of a trapezoid is the distance between the bases, i.e., the length of a line connecting the two, which is perpendicular to both. Quite a fancy definition compared to the usual one, but it sure makes us sound sophisticated, don't you think?īefore we move on to the next section, let us mention two more line segments that all trapezoids have. Indeed, if someone didn't know what a rectangle is, we could just say that it's an isosceles trapezoid which is also a right trapezoid. With these special cases in mind, a keen eye might observe that rectangles satisfy conditions 2 and 3. Secondly, observe that if a leg is perpendicular to one of the bases, then it is automatically perpendicular to the other as well since the two are parallel. Firstly, note how we require here only one of the legs to satisfy this condition – the other may or may not. We've already mentioned that one at the beginning of this section – it is a trapezoid that has two pairs of opposite sides parallel to one another.Ī trapezoid whose legs have the same length (similarly to how we define isosceles triangles).Ī trapezoid whose one leg is perpendicular to the bases. We'd like to mention a few special cases of trapezoids here. The two other non-parallel sides are called legs (similarly to the two sides of a right triangle). Usually, we draw trapezoids the way we did above, which might suggest why we often differentiate between the two by saying bottom and top base. The two sides, which are parallel, are usually called bases.

One half times base one plus base 2