Cuboid

In anatomy, the cuboid bone is a bone in the foot.

In geometry, a cuboid (also called a rectangular prism) is a solid figure bounded by six rectangular faces: a rectangular box. All angles are right angles, and opposite faces of a cuboid are equal. It is also a right rectangular prism. The term "rectangular or oblong prism" is ambiguous. Also the term rectangular parallelepiped is used.

The square cuboid, square box ,or right square prism (also ambiguously called square prism) is a special case of the cuboid in which at least two faces are squares. The cube is a special case of the square prism in which all faces are squares.

If the dimensions of a cuboid are a, b and c, then its volume is abc and its surface area is 2ab + 2bc + 2ac.

The length of the space diagonal is $d\; =\; sqrt\{a^2+b^2+c^2\}\; .$

It is a convex polyhedron. It contains faces that enclose a single region of space. It has 6 faces, 8 vertices, and 12 edges.

Euler's formula (the number of faces (F), vertices (V), and edges (E) of a polyhedron are related by the formula F + V = E + 2 gives here 6 + 8 = 12 + 2.

Cuboid shapes are often used for boxes, cupboards, rooms, buildings, etc. Cuboids are among those solids that can tesselate 3-dimensional space. The shape is fairly versatile in being able to contain multiple smaller cuboids, e.g. sugar cubes in a box, small boxes in a large box, a cupboard in a room, and rooms in a building.

See also

• Hyperrectangle
• Oblong

External links

• Rectangular prism and cuboid Paper models and pictures
• Computer Simulation of Cuboid Dice, an Oxford research project
• Cuboids, Rectangular Prisms and Cubes from Math Is Fun
• Programing cuboid calculations with Delphi (Object Pascal)

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Last updated on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 08:01:14 PDT (GMT -0700)
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