Surface Area of a Pyramid

You can cut and unfold the surface of a pyramid into these shapes.

Every pyramid has ______ polygonal base.

4 3 1 2

We can rearrange the lateral triangles to form the quadrilateral below:

When rearranged, the lateral area appears to be the shape of a large _____, with HALF of the pyramid's _ serving as the parallelogram's base and the pyramid's _______ serving as the parallelogram's height.

parallelogram, base perimeter, slant height parallelogram, base perimeter, height parallelogram, slant height, base perimeter

Given your answers from above, what formula(s) can be used to compute the TOTAL surface area of any pyramid? Hint: There could be more than one correct answer!

Surface Area = 2(base areas) + Lateral Area Surface Area = Base Area +[math]\frac{1}{2}Pl[/math] Surface Area = Base Area + [math]\left(\frac{1}{2}perimeter\right)\left(slantheight\right)[/math]