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Get ready for Geometry
Unit 4: Lesson 2
Slicing geometric shapesSlicing a rectangular pyramid
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What happens when you slice vertically into a rectangular pyramid? What kind of geometric shape results? Created by Sal Khan.
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At0:13Sal talks about a vertical cut. What is a vertical cut?(12 votes)
It means you're cutting up and down. A horizontal cut would be cutting from side to side.(2 votes)
how would you make a 2-d decagon or a nonagon. Would you always need a 3-d decagon/nonagon or can you make it out of another shape. like if you got stumped for a while.(10 votes)
If you have a rectangular pyramid with 10 sides and slide it parallel to the base, you'll get a decagon when look at what was slice. The same can be said with a decagonal prism.
Hope this helps. Good question. That might be the first time I've ever typed "decagonal prism".(2 votes)
I'm seriously confused here, when he cuts the pyramid into a "trapezoid" it still has the characteristics of half of a side of a pyramid. Go to3:20and look, the trapezoid does not include the side closest to you which has the slanted angles of a pyramid side. If you look at it a certain way, then yes it's a trapezoid, but looking at it another way makes it different. Does anyone else understand or see what I'm seeing? Thanks.(10 votes)
It's just your perspective on the shape. If you look at the shape from head-on (meaning you can see the cutting plane as a square), the shape looks like a trapezoid.
Extra info: If you look at the cut off shape so that the cutting plane looks like a line, you'll see a right triangle.(0 votes)
I have a few questions.
1. Do rectangular pyramid's cross section always a trapezoid?
2. When someone says that the cut is parallel to the base, is the cross section that same shape as the base is?
3. Can a rectangular prism or a triangular prism have more than one vertical cross section?(3 votes)- Here are a few answers.
1. If you cut vertically down from the vertex of a pyramid, you get a triangle. You don't always have to cut a pyramid at the same angle either, straight up and down. If you cut horizontally, you would get a rectangle. If you instead cut the rectangular pyramid at an angle, you could get anywhere from a kite to a pentagon. Try thinking about what angle and position you could take a cross section at to get those shapes.
2. For a prism, the cross section that is parallel to the base will be the same size and shape as the base is. For a pyramid, the cross section will be a scaled-down version of the same shape.
3. Yes! You can vertically cut a pyramid down the center-line, where the cross section intersects the vertex. You can also cut it down vertically off to one side. For a rectangular pyramid, you would get a triangle one time and a trapezoid the other.(5 votes)
- how do you find the volume of a pyramid?(3 votes)
Length times width times height divided by 3(3 votes)
- At1:02wouldn't a vertical cut be going through the vertex? Then how did he get a trapezoid at2:50?(4 votes)
It does not have to go through the vertex, and Sal is showing it as not going through the vertex. If it went through the vertex, you would see a triangle, not a trapezoid.(1 vote)
i don't understand this topic! Help me UniKitty or anybody!!(1 vote)
This topic is a bit tricky to understand.
Imagine this:
A butcher is cutting something with his big wide knife. He is a bit silly and starts cutting other things. He finds a pyramid toy and cuts it from top to bottom, perpendicular to the base. When he separates the two pieces he sees that the inside shape is a triangle.
He finds another pyramid and cuts it too, but this one he cuts horizontally to the base. The inside of the halves are squares.
There are more ways to cut the shapes too, but it's a little harder to explain.
I hope this helps you!
(p.s. I made up the story myself :) )(7 votes)
- Was the cut that he made an angled cut?(2 votes)
- any cut would be an angled cut, whether 90degrees to the ground or 0 deg.(2 votes)
Would learning about slicing 3-D figures help in recognizing nets of 3-D figures?(2 votes)
I don't think so. In the video, the triangle has a trapezoid, but when You use a net, a trapezoid wouldn't show up. But I don't know. Does anyone want to try and find out?(2 votes)
- I don't understand the vertical and horizontal cut on 3-d shapes can you please further explain for me?(2 votes)
0:13Video transcript
So I have a three-dimensional
solid right over here. And I want to imagine
what type of a shape I would get if I were
to make a vertical cut. And just to refresh
ourselves, or give us a sense of what a
vertical cut is, imagine if this was made
out of jello or something kind of fairly soft. But it's still a
three-dimensional solid. And I were to make
a cut-- let's say I were to make a
cut right over here. So let's say I had
this big, sharp metal thing-- let me
draw it like that. So you have this big,
sharp metal thing. Let me draw it a
little bit neater. So you have this big,
sharp metal thing that I'm going to
cut right over here. So this is the thing that
I'm going to make the cut. And I'm going to
go straight down. This is a vertical cut
that we're talking about. So this is the thing that
I'm going to cut with. Let me make it big
enough so that it can capture the shape
that will result. So this thing right over
here, it's right in front. And I'm going to cut-- I'm
going to make it go straight down and cut through
this jello, or whatever you want to call it, this
rectangular pyramid of jello. And what would be the resulting
shape of the intersection between the jello and this
thing that I'm using to cut it? And now I encourage
you to pause your video and think about what the
resulting shape would be. And the shape would
be in two dimensions. Because this purple surface
is a two-dimensional-- you could view it
as part of a plane. And so where this
intersects when you cut down this rectangular pyramid is
the shape we're looking for. So I encourage you to pause
the video and think about it or try to come up
with it on your own. So let's think about it. And let me draw the
rectangular pyramid again. So that's the same one. And now let me see what
it would look like once I've done my cut, once I've
brought this thing down. So then this is where I cut. So I cut it right over here. And then it'll exit the bottom. It'll cut along
this side like that, cut along that side like that. And then it'll exit the
bottom right over there. And so let me draw
my whole thing. And so once I slice it down,
it will look like this. My best shot at drawing
it-- it will look like this. This is a vertical cut. So I've brought this thing down. And now the intersection between
the thing that I'm cutting with and this pyramid is going to
be this shape right over here. It cut into the top
right over there. It would get all the way to
the bottom right over there. And along this side, it
would cut right there. And along that side, it
would cut right over there. So what's the resulting
shape in two dimensions of essentially the
intersection between the slicer and the jello? Well, it would be this thing. It would look like a trapezoid. Let me do that in a new color. I'm overusing that one color. It would look like a trapezoid. So this would be
the resulting shape. So the resulting shape
would look like this. Just like that, if you made
the cut right over there.