EXAMPLE 2.6.13 solution

The diagram below shows a city park that will be landscaped, at a cost of $2 per square yard. Find the total cost of this project.

 We need to find the area of the triangular figure (in square yards) and multiply by the cost factor of $2 per square yard.

The area of a triangle is (one half) times base times height

In this case, base = 480 feet and height = 240 feet.

Since we want to compute the area in square yards rather than square feet, we will convert both measurements to yards before computing the area.

base = 480 feet = 160 yards

height = 240 feet = yards = 80 yards

Area of triangle = (one half) times (160 yards) times (80 yards) = 6,400 square yards

Finally,

Cost = (6,400 square yards) times ($2 per square yard) = $12,800