Length Or Width

Name ______Period ____

Height or Width or Depth?

In math classes, the length of an object is the longest side. But in the real world, it is not always clear what is the longest side. Is it the height of the object, or its depth or its width? This is important because if you need to arrange objects such as tables for a special affair, you need to know which side of the room is the depth and which is the width. This is also true in construction where building and furniture placement is described on blueprints. If you get confused, the result may be even worse than what happened to Wayside Elementary School. The orientation of an object is set by convention, or rules. The rule is that when you first approach the object from the most common route, that side of the object is the focus.. In other words, when looking at the object, the side you see, left to right is the width. You may also think of this as the “X” axis. The side of the room or object that is farthest from you is the depth. Height is the Y plane. These conventions apply to objects on a paper, too. The convention is to look at how the paper is oriented. The most common orientation is like this format, portrait. Portrait means that the paper is taller than it is long. The height is the 11 inch side because the way to read this document is the way the text is printed. Landscape means that the paper is longer left to right than it is tall. Landscape orientation is used to show wide graphs or to make drawings. In this class, we will use landscape orientation for all our drafting projects.

Depth ___ Width ___ Height ___ Height ___ Height ___ Width ___ Width ___ Width ___

Why is it important that we know which is the height and width and depth of an object or building? ______What is the orientation of this paper you are reading? Landscape Portrait

When would you use landscape orientation in a document?

a. When you work in a garden b. Draw a picture of a landscape c. Display a wide graph or table d. a& c e. b & c