Shape how many sides

Numeracy Skills:. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day. A polygon is any shape made up of straight lines that can be drawn on a flat surface, like a piece of paper. Such shapes include squares, rectangles, triangles and pentagons but not circles or any other shape that includes a curve.

Understanding shapes is important in mathematics. You will certainly be required to learn about shapes at school but understanding the properties of shapes has many practical applications in professional and real-life situations too. Many professionals need to understand the properties of shapes, including engineers, architects, artists, real-estate agents, farmers and construction workers.

You may well need to understand shapes when doing home improvements and DIY, when gardening and even when planning a party. A three-sided polygon is a triangle. There are several different types of triangle see diagram , including:. Triangles can also be described in terms of their internal angles see our page on Angles for more about naming angles. A triangle with only acute internal angles is called an acute or acute-angled triangle. One with one obtuse angle and two acute angles is called obtuse obtuse-angled , and one with a right angle is known as right-angled.

Each of these will also be either equilateral, isosceles or scalene. Four-sided polygons are usually referred to as quadrilaterals, quadrangles or sometimes tetragons. In geometry the term quadrilateral is commonly used. The term tetragon is consistent with polygon, pentagon etc. You may come across it occasionally, but it is not commonly used in practice.

Parallelogram : Opposite sides are parallel, opposite sides are equal in length, opposite angles are equal. Rhombus : A special type of parallelogram in which all four sides are the same length, like a square that has been squashed sideways. Trapezium or trapezoid : Two sides are parallel, but the other two sides are not. Side lengths and angles are not equal. Isosceles Trapezium or trapezoid : Two sides are parallel and base angles are equal, meaning that non-parallel sides are also equal in length.

Tetrahedron A Tetrahedrons is the same as a triangular pyramid. They have 4 triangular faces, 6 edges and 4 vertices. Cube regular hexahedron Cubes have 6 faces, 12 edges and 8 vertices. A cube is a type of cuboid and is one of the 5 platonic solids. Octahedron Octahedrons are a shape with 8 faces, 12 edges and 6 vertices.

Dodecahedron Dodecahedrons are a shape with 12 faces, 30 edges and 20 vertices. A regular dodecahedron has regular pentagons for its faces, and is one of the 5 platonic solids.

Icosahedron Icosahedron are a shape with 20 faces, 30 edges and 12 vertices. All the faces are triangles. Here you will some printable 2d shape sheets showing a range of 2d shapes. You can choose to have the properties of the 2d shapes displayed or not.

Here you will some printable 3 d shape sheets showing a range of 3d shapes. You can choose to have the sheet printed in color or black. Here you will find a selection of printable 2d and 3d shape sheets. Each sheet is available in color or black and white, and labelled or unlabelled. Using these sheets will help your child to: recognise and name a range of 2d and 3d shapes; recognise regular and irregular shapes.

Using these sheets will help your child to: know different geometric formula; apply a range of formula to solve problems. How to Print or Save these sheets Need help with printing or saving? How to Print support.

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Fun Math Games. All Rights Reserved. Equilateral Triangle. All equilateral triangles have 3 lines of symmetry. Isoscles Triangle. Isosceles triangles have 2 angles equal and 2 sides of equal length. All isosceles triangles have a line of symmetry.

Scalene Triangle. Scalene triangles have no angles equal, and no sides of equal length. Right Triangle. Obtuse Triangle. Acute Triangle. Squares have 4 equal sides and 4 right angles. They have 4 lines of symmetry. All squares belong to the rectangle family. All squares belong to the rhombus family. All squares are also parallelograms. Rectangles have 4 sides and 4 right angles. They all have 2 lines of symmetry 4 lines if they are also a square!

All rectangles belong to the parallelogram family. Rhombuses rhombii have 4 equal sides. Both pairs of opposite sides are parallel.

They all have 2 lines of symmetry 4 lines if they are a square! All rhombuses belong to the parallelogram family. Parallelograms have 2 pairs of parallel sides. This also means that a quadrilateral has exactly four vertices, and exactly four angles. Discussions of 2-D shapes sometimes refer only to the boundary the line segments that form the edges of the figure or to the interior as well. The usual definitions of polygons, however, refer only to the line segments that form the edges of the polygon.

Most of the time, context will make clear what you mean, but you should remain aware that in some cases you may need to clarify. Elementary school curricula typically have children learn the names of special subsets of quadrilaterals with particular features. Here we list the special names. See the articles on each type for their definitions and special properties.

Compare quadri- to Spanish cuatro. Just as triangles and quadrilaterals are special types of polygons, there are many subclasses of quadrilaterals. Like all polygons that have more than three sides, quadrilaterals can be convex like these , , , or concave like these ,. Quadrilaterals can be classified by whether or not their sides, angles, diagonals, or vertices have special properties.

The classification schemes taught in elementary school involve the number of pairs of parallel sides, and the congruence of sides, and whether or not all the angles are right angles all angles are congruent. The names of many of these special quadrilaterals are also typically part of the elementary curriculum, though little else about the properties of these figures may be studied until high school.

Elementary school typically has children learn the names of. The square is also the name of the regular quadrilateral — one in which all sides are congruent and all angles are congruent. Though the names that are given to individual figures does not change, the way that they are grouped may depend on the characteristics used to sort them.