Find and interpret surface area of prisms and cylinders.
Add the areas of all prism faces
Problem
Calculate the total surface area, in square units, of a rectangular prism with length \(3~\text{units}\), width \(4~\text{units}\), and height \(5~\text{units}\).
Big Picture
What this problem is really about
Surface area is an inventory of the prism’s exterior faces, not a measure of the space inside. Pair the two length-by-width faces, the two length-by-height faces, and the two width-by-height faces, then add all three paired contributions. This organization counts each of the six rectangles exactly once and naturally produces square units.
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