The GED Math test will probably contain questions that ask you to work with the circumference and area formulas for a circle. As you'll see in the following practice questions, some of these problems will be a little more involved than simply plugging in numbers.

Practice Questions

A large circular pizza has an 18-inch diameter and is cut into 8 equal slices.

ged-pizza

  1. What is the perimeter of one slice of the pizza?
    eq0601
  2. What is the radius (in cm) of a circle whose circumference happens to equal its area (in cm2)? A. 2 cm B. 3 cm C. 5 cm D. 10 cm

Answers and Explanations

  1. The correct answer is C.

    The equation for the circumference of a circle is

    eq0602

    Substituting the value of the diameter into the equation gives you

    eq0603

    The perimeter of the slice is the distance around the edge of the slice, which equals two radii (2 times 9 inches) plus the length of the curved edge. There are eight pieces of pizza, so the length of the curved edge of the slice represents one-eighth of the entire circumference:

    eq0604

    The perimeter of the slice equals

    eq0605

    so the correct answer is Choice (C).

  2. The correct answer is A.

    The equation for the area of a circle is

    eq0606

    and the equation for the circumference of a circle is

    eq0607

    Because the circumference of this particular circle happens to equal its area, you can set the equations equal to each other and solve for r. Dividing both sides of the equation by

    eq0608

    gives you

    eq0609

    Therefore, Choice (A) is the correct answer.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Stuart Donnelly, PhD, earned his doctorate in mathe-matics from Oxford University at the age of 25. Since then, he has established successful tutoring services in both Hong Kong and the United States and is considered by leading educators to be one of the most experienced and qualified private tutors in the country.

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