Question

How do you use the area of a triangle to solve for b?

Answer 1

Just to confirm, what you mean "b" is base, right?

If so, then the equation for solving the area for the triangle is `bh1/2`. And then you plug in the numbers from your question.

Explanation:

On this website:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/basic-geo/basic-geo-area-and-perimeter/area-triangle/a/area-of-triangle

It explains that a rectangle is composed of 2 triangles.

Just to refresh your mind, `b*h` (or `L*W`) is the area of a rectangle or square. And if you draw it out, a triangle is half of a rectangle basically.

Therefore, `b*h*1/2` is the area of a triangle.

Now to the next part, where you asked of how to apply it on finding the base, if the question didn't prove a number of the base for you, you just do the same thing.

Since I'm bad at explaining, I'm going to give you 2 examples so you will understand:

Ex. 1: A triangle has an area of 16 cm and a height of 4 cm. How long is the base?
`=>`
Area (triangle) = `b * h * 1/2`
`16 = b * 4 * (1/2)`
`32 = b * 4` `=>` [ times 2 on both sides]
`b = 8` `=>` [divided by 4 on both sides]

Hope this helps!!