Solid Shapes Around Us

Draw a circle in your book. Now try to pick it up. You cannot! It is flat. It lies on the paper.

Now pick up a football. It fills your hands. It is solid. A solid shape takes up space.

A face is a flat part of a solid, one you can rest on a table.

Slide your hand over a matchbox. Every flat part you feel is one face.

Pick up a dice. Put your finger on the top, the bottom, the front, the back, the left and the right.

That is 6 flat parts. So a dice has 6 faces, and every single face is a square.

A solid with 6 square faces is a cube. If you count its pointed corners you find 8 of them.

Now pick up a matchbox. Count its faces: top, bottom, front, back, left, right. Again 6 faces.

But look closely. These faces are rectangles, not squares. Some are long and thin, some are wide.

A solid with 6 rectangle faces is a cuboid. Think of a cube that somebody pulled and stretched.

Cuboids you know: a box of soap, a brick, an exercise book, a packet of milk.

Hold the football. Turn it any way you like. It is round everywhere.

A sphere has no flat face and no corners. Push it and it rolls away in any direction.

Spheres you know: a football, an orange, a marble, a ball of dough.

That is a cylinder: 2 flat circle faces and a curved part joining them.

Cylinders you know: a tin of milk powder, a candle, a drum, a piece of chalk.

Uwase holds a tin. Flat circle on top, flat circle underneath, curved all round the middle.

2 flat circle faces → it is a cylinder.

Ishimwe holds a box of soap. It has 6 flat faces. He checks them: they are rectangles, not squares.

6 faces, but rectangles → it is a cuboid, not a cube.