Answer: 357 cm²
Explanation: In this problem, were asked to find the area of the trapezoid shown. Remember that a trapezoid is a quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides. The formula for the area of a trapezoid is shown below
The b's are the bases or the parallel sides and the h represents the height.
So in the trapezoid shown, the bases are 15 cm and 27 cm and the height is 17 cm.
Plugging this information into the formula, we have .
Next, the order of operations tells us that we must simplify inside the parentheses first. 15 cm + 27 cm is 42 cm and we have
1/2 × 42 cm is 21 cm and we have (21 cm)(17 cm) which is 357 cm².
So the area of the trapezoid shown is 357 cm².