Question: what is the formula for total surface area of the cube?
Answer: The surface area of a cube = 6a2 where a is the length of the side of each edge of the cube. Put another way, since all sides of a cube are equal, a is just the lenght of one side of a cube. We have 96 = 6a2 → a2 = 16, so that's the area of one face of the cube.