Polyhedron facts for kids

Some polyhedra Dodecahedron (Regular polyhedron) Small stellated dodecahedron (Regular star) Icosidodecahedron (Uniform) Great cubicuboctahedron (Uniform star) Rhombic triacontahedron (Uniform dual) Elongated pentagonal cupola (Convex regular-faced) Octagonal prism (Uniform prism) Square antiprism (Uniform antiprism)

Most dice are polyhedra.

A polyhedron (one polyhedron, many polyhedra, or polyhedrons) is a geometrical shape. It has flat faces, and straight edges. Usually it is defined by the number of faces, or edges.

Mathematicians do not agree on what makes a polyhedron.

Naming

Usually, polyhedra are named by the number of faces they have. The first polyhedra are the tetrahedron, which is made of four triangles, pentahedron (five faces, can look like a four-sided pyramid), hexahedron (six faces, a cube if it is regular), and heptahedron (seven faces, can look like a prism based on a pentagon, or a pyramid based on a hexagon amongst others).

Images for kids

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  A skeletal polyhedron (specifically, a rhombicuboctahedron) drawn by Leonardo da Vinci to illustrate a book by Luca Pacioli

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  The tetrahemihexahedron, a non-orientable self-intersecting polyhedron with four triangular faces (red) and three square faces (yellow). As with a Möbius strip or Klein bottle, a continuous path along the surface of this polyhedron can reach the point on the opposite side of the surface from its starting point, making it impossible to separate the surface into an inside and an outside.

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  Convex polyhedron blocks on display at the Universum museum in Mexico City

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  Full icosahedral symmetry divides the sphere into 120 triangular domains.

See also

In Spanish: Poliedro para niños