How to find the surface area of a triangular prism without square root?

The nice thing about prisms is that the matching end pairs make it easy to determine a lot of the individual measurements without having to solve for anything. Any measurement that is given for one of the end shapes (ex. height of the triangle, radius of the circle) also applies to the matching shape at the other end. Moreover, if you know the length of one side of the prism, you know the length of all the sides. Distribute these numbers as necessary around your prism to see what you have to work with.

The most common way to find the area of a triangle is to take half of the base times the height. Numerous other formulas exist, however, for finding the area of a triangle, depending on what information you know. Using information about the sides and angles of a triangle, it is possible to calculate the area without knowing the height.