Polyhedron

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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 in the table below:

number
of
faces
name type of face properties image
4 regular tetrahedron
(or regular triangular pyramid)
equilateral triangle 4 vertices, 6 edges, self-dual Tetrahedron.png
6 cube square 8 vertices, 12 edges, dual to octahedron Cube.png
8 regular octahedron equilateral triangle 6 vertices, 12 edges, dual to cube Octahedron.png
12 regular dodecahedron regular pentagon 20 vertices, 30 edges, dual to icosahedron Dodecahedron.png
20 regular icosahedron equilateral triangle 12 vertices, 30 edges, dual to dodecahedron Icosahedron.png