Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Platonic solid
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
{{Short description|Any of the five regular polyhedra}} In [[geometry]], a '''Platonic solid''' is a [[Convex polytope|convex]], [[regular polyhedron]] in [[three-dimensional space|three-dimensional Euclidean space]]. Being a regular polyhedron means that the [[face (geometry)|faces]] are [[congruence (geometry)|congruent]] (identical in shape and size) [[regular polygon]]s (all [[angle]]s congruent and all [[edge (geometry)|edge]]s congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each [[Vertex (geometry)|vertex.]] There are only five such polyhedra: {| class="wikitable center" style="text-align: center" |- ! scope="col" style="font-weight:normal" | [[Regular tetrahedron|Tetrahedron]] ! scope="col" style="font-weight:normal" | [[Cube]] ! scope="col" style="font-weight:normal" | [[Regular octahedron|Octahedron]] ! scope="col" style="font-weight:normal" | [[Regular dodecahedron|Dodecahedron]] ! scope="col" style="font-weight:normal" | [[Regular icosahedron|Icosahedron]]<!--PLEASE DO NOT SWAP THE DODECAHEDRON AND ICOSAHEDRON, THE NAMES CURRENTLY GIVEN ARE CORRECT--> |- | Four faces | Six faces | Eight faces | Twelve faces | Twenty faces |- | [[File:Tetrahedron.svg|80px]] | [[File:Hexahedron.svg|80px]] | [[File:Octahedron.svg|80px]] | [[File:Dodecahedron.svg|80px]] | [[File:Icosahedron.svg|80px]] |- style="font-size: 0.85rem" | {{cslist | [[:File:tetrahedron.gif|Animation]] | [[:File:tetrahedron.stl|3D model]] }} | {{cslist | [[:File:hexahedron.gif|Animation]] | [[:File:hexahedron.stl|3D model]] }} | {{cslist | [[:File:octahedron.gif|Animation]] | [[:File:octahedron.stl|3D model]] }} | {{cslist | [[:File:dodecahedron.gif|Animation]] | [[:File:dodecahedron.stl|3D model]] }} | {{cslist | [[:File:icosahedron.gif|Animation]] | [[:File:Icosahedron.stl|3D model]] }} |} [[Geometer]]s have studied the Platonic solids for thousands of years.<ref>Gardner (1987): [[Martin Gardner]] wrote a popular account of the five solids in his December 1958 [[Mathematical Games column]] in Scientific American.</ref> They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher [[Plato]], who hypothesized in one of his dialogues, the ''[[Timaeus (dialogue)|Timaeus]]'', that the [[classical element]]s were made of these regular solids.<ref name="The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Zeyl|first=Donald|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|title=Plato's Timaeus|year=2019|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/}}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)