Question

The perimeter of a stop sign with 8 sides of equal length is given by the expression 8n. What does the variable n means?

Answer 1

n stands for the length of each side of the octagon. in most cases, the letter used doesn’t matter so it would be the same answer if the letter was y instead of n.

Answer 2

A stop sign is an octagon, a shape with 8 sides. To find a perimeter of any shape, you have to add up the length of all its sides.

The perimeter = 8n, meaning 8 times n. Since there are 8 sides to a stop sign, n must be equal to the length of each side.