3.1 Measuring the perimeter of irregular shapes

Say you needed to find the perimeter of this shape, but two of the measurements are missing. How would you find them out? You can assume that all of the corners are right angles. You need to use the measurements that you do know.

So if you want to find out the missing side on the right, you know that the left-hand side opposite to this is 12 millimetres long. And there is another measurement on the same side in the middle of the shape that is 7 millimetres long.

The missing length must then be the difference between 7 and 12 millimetres. Here’s a sum to show this: 12 minus 7 equals 5 millimetres. So the answer for the right-hand side is 5 millimetres. You can check this by adding 5 and 7, which makes 12 millimetres, the same as the left-hand side.

To find out the length at the bottom of the shape, because you know that all of the corners are right angles, you can add together the other two parallel measurements that are given: 15 plus 8 equals 23 millimetres. So the bottom of the shape is 23 millimetres.

Now you know the measurements for all of the shape’s edges, you can measure the perimeter. 12 plus 15 plus 7 plus 8 plus 5 plus 23 equals 70 millimetres. So the perimeter is 70 millimetres.