Suppose you are asked to find the area of a rectangle that is 2.1-cmcm wide by 5.6-cmcm long. Your calculator answer would be 11.76 cm2cm2. Now suppose you are asked to enter the answer to two significant figures. (Note that if you do not round your answer to two significant figures, your answer will fall outside of the grading tolerance and be graded as incorrect.)

12 square cm correct to 2 significant figures

Step-by-step explanation:

Area of a Rectangle = L X B = 2.1 X 5.6 = 11.76 square cm

To round your result to 2 significant figure, we start counting from the left from the first non-zero digit.

The first two digits are 11 but because the number after is 7 (greater than 4), we round up to 12.

11.76 square cm = 12 square cm correct to 2 significant figures