Cube

By Martin McBride, 2022-12-27
Tags: cube surface area volume net platonic solid
Categories: gcse geometry 3d geometry


A cube is a square box (or block) shape:

Cube

The faces of a cube are all square.

Here is a rotating view of a cube:

Animated rotating cube

Here is a video about cubes:

Volume

A cube is a special type of cuboid that has equal width, length and height:

Cube volume

For a cube with sides of length a, the volume is:

Cube volume formula

The volume is a cubed (this is where the term cubed comes from).

Cube net

We can unfold a cube:

Unfolding cube

When the cube is completely unfolded w it creates the following net:

Cube net

This shows that a cube has 6 square faces - the top, bottom, and 4 sides.

Here is an animation of a cube unfolding:

Animated unfolding cube

Cube surface area

We can find the surface area of a cube by adding up the areas of all its faces. A square has six faces, and each face has an area of a squared, so the total surface area is:

Cube area formula

Cube facts

A cube has eight corners (vertices).

It has twelve edges.

A cube is a Platonic solid (a 3D shape where all the faces are identical regular polygons, squares in this case).

See also



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