Polyhedron

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developed but not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable, developed Main Article is subject to a disclaimer.

A polyhedron is a three-dimensional geometric closed figure bounded by a connected set of polygons. A polyhedron, in Euclidian geometry, must have at least four faces. A polyhedron of four sides is called a tetrahedron, six sides a hexahedron, eight sides an octahedron, ten sides a decahedron. Figures with more sides are typically named with the Greek name for the number of sides, followed by "-hedron".

The polygons bounding a polyhedron are known as faces; the line segments bounding the polygons are known as edges, and the points where the faces meet are vertices (singular vertex).

A convex polyhedron bounded by faces which are all the same-sized regular polygon is known as a Platonic solid. There are only five Platonic solids, shown below:

A convex polyhedron bounded by faces of more than one type of regular polygon, with all edges the same length and all vertices identical is called an Archimedean solid. There are 13 Archimedean solids, shown below: