The area of a parallelogram is the length of its base times the length of its height. We find the height the same way that we find the height for triangles. The height is the distance from the uppermost angle to the base line.
For parallelogram WXYZ, the length
of its base is 5+15=20.
By dropping a perpendicular to the base
to get the height, we have made a right triangle. Do the lengths of one
leg and the hypotenuse look familiar? We have one of our special triangles:
the 5:12:13 Pythagorean ratio. This gives us our height, since we know
that VW must be 12.
Now we can find the area, which is 20
× 12 = 240.
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