Exploding the Area of a Circle

(use with UCSMP Transition Mathematics, Lesson 7-6)

If you can't see the demo above, click here.

Directions

This interactive applet demonstrates how to estimate the area of cicle by rearranging it to approximate a parallelogram. Simply select how many sectors you would like to break the circle into then hit SPLIT to show the circle broken up. Then hit REARRANGE to show the sectors arranged to approximate a parallelogram. Now compare the measurements of both the parallelogram and the circle.