Pyramids

[NMencia09]

Do we need to know anything about Pyramids?

? (veritas): a pyramidal-shaped box to protect a plant is constructed with 4 lateral faces and an open bottom. What ist he lateral area of the box?

(1) the base of the pyramid is a polygon with all sides of equal length, and the perimeter of the base is 1 meter.

(2) the lateral faces are isosceles triangles that have the same size and shape

I chose, C, answer is E.

answer expl. says that neither the exact shape nor its height is known in either choice, so both together are insufficient.


I thought C because if its a pyramid and all the triangles are isosceles, isnt the base a square?

each triangle area = 1/2 (.25) ( h ) where h = sqrt.3 * (.25/2) ?
Multiply this by 4 to get area of all 4 sides?

not sure... thanks!

[jnelson0612]

Do we need to know anything about Pyramids?

? (veritas): a pyramidal-shaped box to protect a plant is constructed with 4 lateral faces and an open bottom. What ist he lateral area of the box?

(1) the base of the pyramid is a polygon with all sides of equal length, and the perimeter of the base is 1 meter.

(2) the lateral faces are isosceles triangles that have the same size and shape

I chose, C, answer is E.

answer expl. says that neither the exact shape nor its height is known in either choice, so both together are insufficient.


I thought C because if its a pyramid and all the triangles are isosceles, isnt the base a square?

each triangle area = 1/2 (.25) ( h ) where h = sqrt.3 * (.25/2) ?
Multiply this by 4 to get area of all 4 sides?

not sure... thanks!

Hey Noah,
It's highly unlikely that you'll see something involving a pyramid, but you never know. This information is not going to be sufficient because you don't know anything about the height. The base has sides of 1, but the height really could be anything. This could be a very short pyramid or a very tall pyramid. Statement 2 doesn't tell you much; it's just telling you that it's a regular pyramid (all four triangular sides equal) rather than an irregular pyramid.

I'll again reiterate that this is a pretty odd question, and I wouldn't worry a lot about this.