Tom Clarke and James Frederick Well from Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall and Shu Cao from Oxford High School gave this solution for a convex quadrilateral. Can you see how to adapt the solution for the case of the arrow shaped quadrilateral?

Diagonals for Area

Suppose there is a convex quadrilateral ABCD, the diagonals AC and BD cross each other at O. The angle between AO and BO is θ degrees, the angle between DO and CO is the same. The angle between AO and DO is 180-θ degrees, the angle between BO and CO is the same.

The area of triangle AOB is 1 2 AO×BOsinθ.
The area of triangle AOD is 1 2 AO×DOsin(180-θ)= 1 2 AO×DOsinθ.
The area of triangle DOC is 1 2 DO×COsinθ.
The area of triangle BOC is 1 2 BO×COsin(180-θ)= 1 2 BO×COsinθ.
The area of the quadrilateral is the sum of these four triangles.


Area = 1 2 AO×BOsinθ+ 1 2 AO×DOsinθ+ 1 2 DO×COsinθ+ 1 2 BO×COsinθ = 1 2 [AO(BO+DO)+CO(DO+BO)]sinθ = 1 2 (AO×BD+CO×BD)sinθ = 1 2 AC×BDsinθ

So we have proved that for a convex quadrilateral the area of the quadrilateral is given by half the product of the lengths of the diagonals multiplied by the sine of the angle between the diagonals.