Comparing The Five Platonic Solids

There are only five platonic solids and the name of each shape comes from the number of faces it has.The five platonic solids are tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron. Each solid is made of regular polygons and the polygons of each solid are congruent. The topics that will be discussed in this paper are what are the five platonic solids, who classified the five shapes, their key features, the shapes similarities and differences, and examples in real life.

The first topic is what the five platonic solids are. Platonic solids are solids where every face is the same regular polygon and are 3D shapes. At each vertex (corner) the same number of polygons meet. As mentioned before the five platonic solids are tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron. Each solids faces, edges, and vertices are all congruent and the five platonic solids are known as convex polyhedron.

The second topic is who classified the five shapes. The five solids were first discovered by ancient greeks, and later described in the work of the Greek Philosopher Plato. The work in which Plato wrote about the five solids is called Timaeus. Plato was born around 430 B.C. and he came to the conclusion that the five solids made up the physical universe.
The tetrahedron has 3 triangles that meet at each vertex, it also has 4 vertices, 4 faces, and 6 edges. The octahedron has 4 triangles that meet at each vertex, 8 faces, 6 vertices, and 12 edges. The cube has 3 squares that meet at each vertex, 6 faces, 8 vertices, and 12 edges. The icosahedron has 5 triangles that meet at each vertex, 20 faces, 12 vertices, and 30 edges. The dodecahedron has 3 pentagons that meet at each vertex, 12 faces, 20 vertices, and 30 edges. The tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron are made of equilateral triangles. The cube is made of squares and the dodecahedron is made of regular