Area and perimeter calculator for 2D shapes

Average the two parallel sides and multiply by the perpendicular height: A = (a + b)/2 × h. Bases of 10 cm and 4 cm with a height of 4 cm give 7 × 4 = 28 cm². British English calls this shape a trapezium; the formula is the same. The perimeter also needs the two slanted legs: legs of 5 cm each make it 24 cm.

Use Heron's formula. Take the semi-perimeter s = (a + b + c)/2, then A = √(s(s − a)(s − b)(s − c)). Sides of 5, 6 and 7 cm give s = 9 and A = √(9 × 4 × 3 × 2) = √216 ≈ 14.697 cm². Three lengths only make a triangle if each is shorter than the other two combined, so 3, 4 and 8 have no area.

A = (3√3/2)s², about 2.598 times the side squared. A hexagon with 5 cm sides covers 64.952 cm², and one with 2 m sides covers 10.392 m². Any regular polygon with n sides of length s has A = ns²/(4 tan(180°/n)). A hexagon's circumradius equals its side, and its apothem is s√3/2 ≈ 0.866s.

Not an exact one in elementary functions: the exact perimeter is a complete elliptic integral. Ramanujan's 1914 approximation, P ≈ π(a + b)(1 + 3h/(10 + √(4 − 3h))) with h = (a − b)²/(a + b)², is off by at most 0.04%, reached only as the ellipse flattens into a line. For semi-axes of 10 and 6 it gives 51.0539977, within 1.2 × 10⁻⁹ of the exact value.

Multiply by 0.09290304, the square of the international foot (0.3048 m exactly, fixed in 1959). One square metre is about 10.764 ft². A 12 ft × 10 ft room is 120 ft², or 11.148 m². Area scales with the square of the length unit, so converting each side first and then multiplying gives the same result.

Accuracy depends on your inputs and the method's assumptions. Decimal arithmetic uses 50 significant digits, but estimates, numerical methods and source data can be less precise; the displayed rounding does not remove those limits. It is checked against 16 worked examples whose answers come from independent sources; for example, “Rectangle 8 × 5 cm” is checked against 8 × 5, 2(8 + 5); Python 3.8 math.sqrt(89).

Weisstein, E. W. “Heron's Formula”, “Regular Polygon”, “Ellipse” — MathWorld; Ramanujan, S. (1914) “Modular equations and approximations to π”, Quarterly Journal of Mathematics 45, 350–372 (perimeter approximation II); NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C — exact inch–centimetre relation (1 in = 2.54 cm).