Although there isn't always an agreed upon definition, a polyhedron is described as 3 dimensional geometric solid with flat faces and straight edges, such as a regular dodecahedron, which features 12 pentagonal faces and would be very difficult to use as a soccer ball.

A regular polyhedron has regular polygon faces (a square or equilateral triangle for example) that are organized the same way around each point (vertex). Examples of regular polyhedrons include the tetrahedron and cube.

A cube has 6 faces, 8 points (vertices) and 12 edges.

11 different ‘nets’ can be made by folding out the 6 square faces of a cube in a range of ways.

A rectangular cuboid is similar to a cube but doesn't feature 3 edges of the same length. The rectangular cuboid shape can often be seen in boxes.

A tetrahedron features 4 triangular faces, with 3 meeting at each point (vertex).

In geometry, a pyramid is a polyhedron that connects a polygon base (such as a triangle or square) to a point (apex) using triangles. The great pyramids that the Ancient Egyptians built many years ago are a rough example of a square pyramid (they have a square base). A triangular pyramid is also known as a tetrahedron.

An octahedron has eight faces made from equilateral triangles, with 4 of them meeting at each point (vertex).

An icosahedron has 20 faces made from identical equilateral triangles. It also has 30 edges and 12 points (vertices).

A parallelepiped is a three dimensional polyhedron made from 6 parallelograms.

By definition, curved 3D shapes such as cylinders, cones and spheres are not polyhedrons.

Check out our pictures of shapes.