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polyhedron
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Figure 3: (Left) A prism whose base is an equilateral triangle transformed by a screw operation and a caving in of the side faces into (right) an eight-faced polyhedron. The resulting polyhedron cannot be split into tetrahedra with their vertices at the vertices of the polyhedron.
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Italian-born physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi draws a diagram at a blackboard with mathematical equations. circa 1950.
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polyhedron

geometry
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polyhedron, In Euclidean geometry, a three-dimensional object composed of a finite number of polygonal surfaces (faces). Technically, a polyhedron is the boundary between the interior and exterior of a solid. In general, polyhedrons are named according to number of faces. A tetrahedron has four faces, a pentahedron five, and so on; a cube is a six-sided regular polyhedron (hexahedron) whose faces are squares. The faces meet at line segments called edges, which meet at points called vertices. See also Platonic solid; Euler’s formula.

This article was most recently revised and updated by William L. Hosch.