Prism (geometry)

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

A prism is a polyhedron made of two congruent polygons (called ends) lying in parallel planes and oriented in the same direction, connected with parallelograms that correspond with the number of the polygon's sides. Prisms are an example of the prismatoids.

The volume of a prism is equal to the area of the polygon at the end multiplied by the distance separating the planes the polygons lie on.

A right prism is one where the lines connecting the vertices between the ends are orthogonal to the plane of the ends, and the sides are rectangles. A uniform prism is a right prism where the ends are regular polygons and the separation between the two ends is equal to the length of the sides of the end, and thus the side faces are squares.