1. What is Identification of Shapes?
A shape of an object refers to its external form or its appearance. You can identify a shape by its well-defined outline or boundary. Usually, shapes are of either 2 dimensions (such as squares, circles, and triangles) or 3 dimensions (such as cubes, spheres, and pyramids).
The process of recognizing and classifying a geometric figure based on its properties and characteristics is known as the identification of Shapes.
Let's check out how to identify different types of shapes:
1.1 Identification of 2D Shapes
To identify a 2D shape one should look for the following properties of the shape
- The number of straight lines/sides
- Angles / opposite angles
- Parallel and perpendicular lines
- Curved line
- Straight lines of the same length.
The table below shows important shapes with 3 sides and their identification properties:-
Example 1:
Which of these is an equilateral triangle?
Solution:
Only option A has all three sides equal so the answer is Option A.
The table below shows important shapes with 4 sides and their identification properties:-
Example 2:
Name the shapes below.
Other than 3-sided and 4-sided shapes mentioned above, nomenclature of shapes is easy you just need to figure out the number of sides and whether those sides are equal or not. You need to memorize the table below to identify the shape.
The name of different shapes based on the number of sides are listed below:
Depending on the length of the sides a shape can be regular or irregular, regular meaning all the sides are of the same length and irregular meaning any other combination of length of the sides.
For example
1.2 Identification of 3D Shapes
The 3D Shapes or 3-dimensional shapes are different from 2D Shapes. The three dimensions are length, width, and height.
To identify a 3D shape you need to look for:
- Faces: A face is a flat or curved surface.
- Edges: Edges are straight lines where two faces meet in the 3D Shape.
- Vertices: Vertices are the corners in a 3D shape. Two or more edges meet to make a corner
Let us now take a look at the properties of some of the most common 3D Shapes.
Difference between pyramids and prisms:
1) A Prism has two identical bases whereas a pyramid has only one base.
2) The faces of a pyramid are triangularly joined at a point, whereas the sides of a prism are always rectangular.
Now that you know all there is to know about the Identification of Shapes, apply the knowledge you gained and practice the past paper questions and quiz here.
