Question

A living room is 8 feet long and 16 feet wide. If the ceiling is 10 feet high, what is the total surface area of the four walls?

Answer 1

The living room is similarly shape to a rectangular prism. However, we will only solve for the four walls of the room.

`\begin{gathered} \text{The surface area is now calculated as} \\ SA=2(10\text{ ft}\cdot16\text{ ft})+2(10\text{ ft}\cdot8\text{ ft}) \\ \text{Note: The top and bottom surface area are not counted.} \end{gathered}`
`\begin{gathered} SA=2(10\text{ ft}\cdot16\text{ ft})+2(10\text{ ft}\cdot8\text{ ft}) \\ SA=2(160\text{ ft}^2)+2(80\text{ ft}^2) \\ SA=320\text{ ft}^2+160\text{ ft}^2 \\ SA=480\text{ ft}^2 \end{gathered}`

Therefore, the total surface area of the four walls is 480 square feet.