What is the area of a rectangle with length 8 and width 5?

• A. 13
• B. 33
• C. 52
• D. 40

Answer: (D)

Area is found by multiplying length by width. If a rectangle is 8 units long and 5 units wide, you can imagine it as 8 rows of 5 unit squares (or 5 columns of 8 squares). In either view, the total number of unit squares inside—the area—is 8 × 5 = 40. So the area is 40. The other numbers don’t come from multiplying the sides, so they don’t represent how much space is inside the rectangle.