1 What do you picture in your mind when you hear rectangular prism?
2 What do you picture in your mind when you hear surface area?
Open the Surface Area of a Rectangular Prism Starter File and click "Run".
Type prism into the Interactions Area (on the right) and hit "enter" to see an image of a rectangular prism.
3 How many faces does this prism have?
Defining Faces
Find PART 1 in the Definitions Area of the starter file (on the left). You will see a definition for front and back.
4 How did the author know to use width and height as the dimensions for front?
5 Why are front and back defined to be the same thing?
6 Using these definitions as a model, add definitions for the other faces of this prism to the Definitions Area (on the left).
Completing the List
Find PART 2 in the starter file. You’ll see (list front back)… so far the list only includes front and back.
7 Complete the faces list, then type (print-imgs faces) into the Interactions Area. What do you see?
Printing Your Paper Model
We’re going to print the faces following directions in PART 3 and build a paper model of a rectangular prism.
Before you print and build your prism, you can change the length, width, and height of your prism at the top of the starter file. Be sure that all 3 dimensions are different, and that they are all small enough to fit on a sheet of paper. If you change them, record your new dimensions here.
LENGTH: WIDTH: HEIGHT:
10 Calculate the surface area of your prism, by adding the area of each face. Show your work below.
Code for Calculating the Surface Area of a Prism
Follow the directions in PART 4 of the starter file to write code to calculate the surface area.
11 How many definitions did you write?
12 How does the surface area that the computer returns compare to the surface area you calculated by hand?
These materials were developed partly through support of the National Science Foundation, (awards 1042210, 1535276, 1648684, 1738598, 2031479, and 1501927). 
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