Rectangular cuboid

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Rectangular cuboid
Cuboid no label.svg
Type Prism
Plesiohedron
Faces 6 rectangles
Edges 12
Vertices 8
Properties convex,
zonohedron,
isogonal

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. [a]

Contents

Many writers just call these "cuboids", without qualifying them as being rectangular, but others use cuboid to refer to a more general class of polyhedra with six quadrilateral faces. [1]

Properties

Square prism.svg
A square rectangular prism, a special case of the rectangular prism.
Hexahedron.png
A cube, a special case of the square rectangular box.

A rectangular cuboid is a convex polyhedron with six rectangle faces. The dihedral angles of a rectangular cuboid are all right angles, and its opposite faces are congruent. [2] By definition, this makes it a right rectangular prism . Rectangular cuboids may be referred to colloquially as "boxes" (after the physical object). If two opposite faces become squares, the resulting one may obtain another special case of rectangular prism, known as square rectangular cuboid. [b] They can be represented as the prism graph . [3] [c] In the case that all six faces are squares, the result is a cube. [4]

If a rectangular cuboid has length , width , and height , then: [5]

Appearance

Rectangular cuboid shapes are often used for boxes, cupboards, rooms, buildings, containers, cabinets, books, sturdy computer chassis, printing devices, electronic calling touchscreen devices, washing and drying machines, etc. They are among those solids that can tessellate three-dimensional space. The shape is fairly versatile in being able to contain multiple smaller rectangular cuboids, e.g. sugar cubes in a box, boxes in a cupboard, cupboards in a room, and rooms in a building.

A rectangular cuboid with integer edges, as well as integer face diagonals, is called an Euler brick; for example with sides 44, 117, and 240. A perfect cuboid is an Euler brick whose space diagonal is also an integer. It is currently unknown whether a perfect cuboid actually exists. [6]

The number of different nets for a simple cube is 11. However, this number increases significantly to at least 54 for a rectangular cuboid of three different lengths. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Space diagonal</span>

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References

Notes

  1. The terms rectangular prism and oblong prism, however, are ambiguous, since they do not specify all angles.
  2. This is also called square cuboid, square box, or right square prism. However, this is sometimes ambiguously called a square prism.
  3. The symbol represents the skeleton of a -sided prism. [3]

Citations

  1. Robertson (1984), p.  75.
  2. 1 2 Pisanski & Servatius (2013), p.  21.
  3. Mills & Kolf (1999), p.  16.
  4. Webb & Smith (2013), p.  108.
  5. Steward, Don (May 24, 2013). "nets of a cuboid" . Retrieved December 1, 2018.

Bibliographies