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Triangles

	A triangle has three sides and three angles
	The three angles always add to 180°

Equilateral, Isosceles and Scalene

There are three special names given to triangles that tell how many sides (or angles) are equal.

There can be 3, 2 or no equal sides/angles:

Equilateral Triangle

Three equal sides
Three equal angles, always 60°

Isosceles Triangle

Two equal sides
Two equal angles

Scalene Triangle

No equal sides
No equal angles

What Type of Angle?

Triangles can also have names that tell you what type of angle is inside:

Acute Triangle

All angles are less than 90°

Right Triangle

Has a right angle (90°)

Obtuse Triangle

Has an angle more than 90°

Combining the Names

Sometimes a triangle will have two names, for example:

Right Isosceles Triangle

Has a right angle (90°), and also two equal angles

Can you guess what the equal angles are?

Area

The area is half of the base times height.

"b" is the distance along the base
"h" is the height (measured at right angles to the base)

Area = ½bh

The formula works for all triangles.

Another way of writing the formula is bh/2

Example: What is the area of this triangle?

Triangle

Height = h = 12

Base = b = 20

Area = bh/2 = 20 × 12 / 2 = 120

Just make sure that the "h" is measured at right angles to the "b".

Why is the Area "Half of bh"?

Imagine you "doubled" the triangle (flip it around one of the upper edges) to make a square-like shape (it would be a "parallelogram" actually), THEN the whole area would be bh (that would be for both triangles, so just one is ½bh), like this:

You can also see that if you sliced the new triangle and placed the sliced part on the other side you get a simple rectangle, whose area is bh.