This is the students’ version of the page. Log in above for the teachers’ version.

Prerequisites

G16a – Area of rectangles
G16b – Area of triangles
G16d – Area of trapezia (required for Beta exercise 2)
G16e – Volume of cuboids and other right prisms (required for Exam-style question 2 and the Challenge)

Surface areas and nets

Can you find the area of the nets of these shapes? You can unfold the net by dragging down the slider. Click and drag the grid to rotate your view. Shift+click and drag to pan the view.

Surface area of cuboids, prisms and pyramids

Teacher resources

Teachers: log in to access the following:

Slides in PPTX (with click-to-reveal answers)
Slides in PDF (one slide per page, suitable for importing into IWB software)

Worksheet (with space for student work)
Handout (slides with exercises only; 4 per page for reduced printing)
- Worked solutions to all questions

Links to past exam and UKMT questions

Teachers: log in to access these.

Interactive GeoGebra activity

Choose a cuboid, triangular prism or square-based pyramid. Change its dimensions to see if you can work out its surface area. Tick the boxes to highlight particular faces and to show the correct surface area.

With thanks to Anthony, whose Custom Cuboid applet is available here. Material modified and embedded here under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.