In the triangle area formula A = 1/2 b h, what do the letters b and h represent?

• A. b is breadth, h is height
• B. b is base, h is hypotenuse
• C. b is base, h is height
• D. b is breadth, h is hypotenuse

Answer: (A)

Base and height are what the formula uses. The base is the side you choose as the reference, and the height is the perpendicular distance from that base to the opposite vertex. The area of a triangle is half the area of a rectangle that has the same base and height, which gives A = 1/2 × base × height. In geometry, we call that side the base rather than breadth, and the height is always a distance perpendicular to the base. The hypotenuse is just the longest side of a right triangle and isn’t what the height refers to in this context.