What Are Polygons

CREDITS
Animation & Design: Peter van de Heuvel
Narration: Lucy Billings
Script: Lucy Billings

The word polygon comes from Greek. Poly means “many” and Gon means “angles”. Polygon = many angles. Polygons are 2-dimensional shapes, that are made of straight lines, with all the sides joined up. They can be regular, with equal angles and equal sides. Or irregular with angles and lengths of different sizes. They can even intersect themselves. Depending upon how many sides they have, different polygons have different names. Starting with 3 sides: triangles. There are different types of triangles (equilateral, isosceles, scalene, right angle triangles) but they all have 3 sides and 3 angles. Next come quadrilaterals with 4 sides and 4 angles. Now for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 sided shapes: Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon, Octagon, Nonagon and Decagons. The names can be a little hard to remember and connect them with something. Quad for quad bikes which have 4 wheels. The “Pentagon” building in america has 5 sides. Or P E N T A on your fingers is 5. Hex has an X as does six. Octopus have 8 legs. N for nonogon and for nine. Dec is for 10 just like our decimal system is base 10.