Cuboid

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In geometry, a cuboid is a hexahedron with quadrilateral faces, meaning it is a polyhedron with six faces; it has eight vertices and twelve edges. A rectangular cuboid (sometimes also called a "cuboid") has all right angles and equal opposite faces. Etymologically, "cuboid" means "like a cube", in the sense of a convex solid which can be transformed into a cube (by adjusting the lengths of its edges and the angles between its adjacent faces). A cuboid is a convex polyhedron whose polyhedral graph is the same as that of a cube. [1] [2]

Cuboids have different types. A special case of a cuboid is a rectangular cuboid , with six rectangle faces and adjacent faces meeting at right angles. When all of the rectangular cuboid's edges are equal in length, it results in a cube, with six square faces and adjacent faces meeting at right angles. [1] [3] Along with the rectangular cuboids, parallelepiped is a cuboid with six parallelogram. Rhombohedron is a cuboid with six rhombus faces. A square frustum is a frustum with a square base, but the rest of its faces are quadrilaterals. The square frustum is formed by truncating the apex of a square pyramid.

In attempting to classify cuboids by their symmetries, Robertson (1983) found that there were at least 22 different cases, "of which only about half are familiar in the shapes of everyday objects". [4]

Some notable cuboids
(quadrilateral-faced convex hexahedra8 vertices and 12 edges each)
ImageNameFacesSymmetry group
Hexahedron.png Cube 6 congruent squaresOh, [4,3], (*432)
order 48
TrigonalTrapezohedron.svg Trigonal trapezohedron 6 congruent rhombi D3d, [2+,6], (2*3)
order 12
Cuboid no label.svg Rectangular cuboid 3 pairs of rectangles D2h, [2,2], (*222)
order 8
Concertina tesseract cell; rhombic prism, upper.png Right rhombic prism 1 pair of rhombi,
4 congruent squares
Usech kvadrat piramid.png Right square frustum 2 non-congruent squares,
4 congruent isosceles trapezoids
C4v, [4], (*44)
order 8
Trigonal trapezohedron gyro-side.png Twisted trigonal trapezohedron 6 congruent quadrilateralsD3, [2,3]+, (223)
order 6
Ti Xing Zhu .png Right isosceles-trapezoidal prism1 pair of isosceles trapezoids;
1, 2 or 3 (congruent) square(s)
?, ?, ?
order 4
Rhombohedron.svg Rhombohedron 3 pairs of rhombiCi, [2+,2+], (×)
order 2
Parallelepiped 2013-11-29.svg Parallelepiped 3 pairs of parallelograms
Example of a quadrilateral-faced non-convex hexahedron Generic quadrilateral hexahedron.svg
Example of a quadrilateral-facednon-convex hexahedron

There exist quadrilateral-faced hexahedra which are non-convex.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archimedean solid</span> Polyhedra in which all vertices are the same

The Archimedean solids are a set of thirteen convex polyhedra whose faces are regular polygons, but not all alike, and whose vertices are all symmetric to each other. The solids were named after Archimedes, although he did not claim credit for them. They belong to the class of uniform polyhedra, the polyhedra with regular faces and symmetric vertices. Some Archimedean solids were portrayed in the works of artists and mathematicians during the Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuboctahedron</span> Polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces

A cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. As such, it is a quasiregular polyhedron, i.e., an Archimedean solid that is not only vertex-transitive but also edge-transitive. It is radially equilateral. Its dual polyhedron is the rhombic dodecahedron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cube</span> Solid object with six equal square faces

In geometry, a cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six congruent square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It is a type of parallelepiped, with pairs of parallel opposite faces, and more specifically a rhombohedron, with congruent edges, and a rectangular cuboid, with right angles between pairs of intersecting faces and pairs of intersecting edges. It is an example of many classes of polyhedra: Platonic solid, regular polyhedron, parallelohedron, zonohedron, and plesiohedron. The dual polyhedron of a cube is the regular octahedron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dual polyhedron</span> Polyhedron associated with another by swapping vertices for faces

In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.

In geometry, an octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces. One special case is the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. Regular octahedra occur in nature as crystal structures. Many types of irregular octahedra also exist, including both convex and non-convex shapes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polyhedron</span> Three-dimensional shape with flat faces, straight edges, and sharp corners

In geometry, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional figure with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.

In elementary geometry, a polytope is a geometric object with flat sides (faces). Polytopes are the generalization of three-dimensional polyhedra to any number of dimensions. Polytopes may exist in any general number of dimensions n as an n-dimensional polytope or n-polytope. For example, a two-dimensional polygon is a 2-polytope and a three-dimensional polyhedron is a 3-polytope. In this context, "flat sides" means that the sides of a (k + 1)-polytope consist of k-polytopes that may have (k – 1)-polytopes in common.

In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent regular polygons, and the same number of faces meet at each vertex. There are only five such polyhedra:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhombicuboctahedron</span> Archimedean solid with 26 faces

In geometry, the rhombicuboctahedron is an Archimedean solid with 26 faces, consisting of 8 equilateral triangles and 18 squares. It was named by Johannes Kepler in his 1618 Harmonices Mundi, being short for truncated cuboctahedral rhombus, with cuboctahedral rhombus being his name for a rhombic dodecahedron.

In solid geometry, a face is a flat surface that forms part of the boundary of a solid object; a three-dimensional solid bounded exclusively by faces is a polyhedron. A face can be finite like a polygon or circle, or infinite like a half-plane or plane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhombus</span> Quadrilateral with sides of equal length

In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The rhombus is often called a "diamond", after the diamonds suit in playing cards which resembles the projection of an octahedral diamond, or a lozenge, though the former sometimes refers specifically to a rhombus with a 60° angle, and the latter sometimes refers specifically to a rhombus with a 45° angle.

A hexahedron or sexahedron is any polyhedron with six faces. A cube, for example, is a regular hexahedron with all its faces square, and three squares around each vertex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prism (geometry)</span> Solid with 2 parallel n-gonal bases connected by n parallelograms

In geometry, a prism is a polyhedron comprising an n-sided polygon base, a second base which is a translated copy of the first, and n other faces, necessarily all parallelograms, joining corresponding sides of the two bases. All cross-sections parallel to the bases are translations of the bases. Prisms are named after their bases, e.g. a prism with a pentagonal base is called a pentagonal prism. Prisms are a subclass of prismatoids.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regular polytope</span> Polytope with highest degree of symmetry

In mathematics, a regular polytope is a polytope whose symmetry group acts transitively on its flags, thus giving it the highest degree of symmetry. In particular, all its elements or j-faces — cells, faces and so on — are also transitive on the symmetries of the polytope, and are themselves regular polytopes of dimension jn.

In geometry, a polytope or a tiling is isogonal or vertex-transitive if all its vertices are equivalent under the symmetries of the figure. This implies that each vertex is surrounded by the same kinds of face in the same or reverse order, and with the same angles between corresponding faces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elongated square gyrobicupola</span> 37th Johnson solid

In geometry, the elongated square gyrobicupola is a polyhedron constructed by two square cupolas attaching onto the bases of octagonal prism, with one of them rotated. It was once mistakenly considered a rhombicuboctahedron by many mathematicians. It is not considered to be an Archimedean solid because it lacks a set of global symmetries that map every vertex to every other vertex, unlike the 13 Archimedean solids. It is also a canonical polyhedron. For this reason, it is also known as pseudo-rhombicuboctahedron, Miller solid, or Miller–Askinuze solid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Net (polyhedron)</span> Edge-joined polygons which fold into a polyhedron

In geometry, a net of a polyhedron is an arrangement of non-overlapping edge-joined polygons in the plane which can be folded to become the faces of the polyhedron. Polyhedral nets are a useful aid to the study of polyhedra and solid geometry in general, as they allow for physical models of polyhedra to be constructed from material such as thin cardboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triangular prism</span> Prism with a 3-sided base

In geometry, a triangular prism or trigonal prism is a prism with 2 triangular bases. If the edges pair with each triangle's vertex and if they are perpendicular to the base, it is a right triangular prism. A right triangular prism may be both semiregular and uniform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midsphere</span> Sphere tangent to every edge of a polyhedron

In geometry, the midsphere or intersphere of a convex polyhedron is a sphere which is tangent to every edge of the polyhedron. Not every polyhedron has a midsphere, but the uniform polyhedra, including the regular, quasiregular and semiregular polyhedra and their duals all have midspheres. The radius of the midsphere is called the midradius. A polyhedron that has a midsphere is said to be midscribed about this sphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rectangular cuboid</span> Cuboid with all right angles and equal opposite faces

A rectangular cuboid is a special case of a cuboid with rectangular faces in which all of its dihedral angles are right angles. This shape is also called rectangular parallelepiped or orthogonal parallelepiped.

References

  1. 1 2 Robertson, Stewart A. (1984). Polytopes and Symmetry . Cambridge University Press. p.  75. ISBN   9780521277396.
  2. Branko Grünbaum has also used the word "cuboid" to describe a more general class of convex polytopes in three or more dimensions, obtained by gluing together polytopes combinatorially equivalent to hypercubes. See: Grünbaum, Branko (2003). Convex Polytopes. Graduate Texts in Mathematics. Vol. 221 (2nd ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 59. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-0019-9. ISBN   978-0-387-00424-2. MR   1976856.
  3. Dupuis, Nathan F. (1893). Elements of Synthetic Solid Geometry. Macmillan. p. 53. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
  4. Robertson, S. A. (1983). "Polyhedra and symmetry". The Mathematical Intelligencer . 5 (4): 57–60. doi:10.1007/BF03026511. MR   0746897.