SHAPES

A shape is the form of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as
opposed to other properties such as color, texture or material type.

Classification of simple shapes

Some simple shapes can be put into broad categories . For instance, polygons are
classified according to their number of edges as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, etc.
Each of these is divided into smaller categories; triangles can
be equilateral, isosceles, obtuse, acute, scalene, etc. while quadrilaterals can
be rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, squares, etc.

Other common shapes are points, lines, planes, and conic sections such
as ellipses, circles, and parabolas.

Among the most common 3-dimensional shapes are polyhedra, which are shapes with flat
faces; ellipsoids, which are egg-shaped or sphere-shaped objects; cylinders; and cones.

If an object falls into one of these categories exactly or even approximately, we can use it
to describe the shape of the object. Thus, we say that the shape of a manhole cover is
a disk, because it is approximately the same geometric object as an actual geometric disk
Shape in geometry

There are several ways to compare the shapes of two objects:

 Congruence: Two objects are congruent if one can be transformed into the other
by a sequence of rotations, translations, and/or reflections.
 Similarity: Two objects are similar if one can be transformed into the other by a
uniform scaling, together with a sequence of rotations, translations, and/or reflections.

 Isotopy: Two objects are isotopic if one can be transformed into the other by a
sequence of deformations that do not tear the object or put holes in it.

Sometimes, two similar or congruent objects may be regarded as having a different shape
if a reflection is required to transform one into the other. For instance, the letters "b" and
"d" are a reflection of each other, and hence they are congruent and similar, but in some
contexts they are not regarded as having the same shape. Sometimes, only the outline or
external boundary of the object is considered to determine its shape.

For instance, a hollow sphere may be considered to have the same shape as a solid
sphere. Procrustes analysis is used in many sciences to determine whether or not two
objects have the same shape, or to measure the difference between two shapes. In
advanced mathematics, quasi-isometry can be used as a criterion to state that two shapes
are approximately the same.

Simple shapes can often be classified into basic geometric objects such as a point, a line,
a curve, a plane, a plane figure (e.g. square or circle), or a solid figure
(e.g. cube or sphere). However, most shapes occurring in the physical world are complex.
Some, such as plant structures and coastlines, may be so complicated as to defy
traditional mathematical description – in which case they may be analyzed by differential
geometry, or as fractals.

Equivalence of shapes

In geometry, two subsets of a Euclidean space have the same shape if one can be
transformed to the other by a combination of translations, rotations (together also
called rigid transformations), and uniform scalings. In other words, the shape of a set of
points is all the geometrical information that is invariant to translations, rotations, and
size changes. Having the same shape is an equivalence relation, and accordingly a precise
mathematical definition of the notion of shape can be given as being an equivalence
class of subsets of a Euclidean space having the same shape.

Mathematician and statistician David George Kendall writes:[1]

In this paper ‘shape’ is used in the vulgar sense, and means what one would normally
expect it to mean. [...] We here define ‘shape’ informally as ‘all the geometrical
information that remains when location, scale[2] and rotational effects are filtered out from
an object.’
Shapes of physical objects are equal if the subsets of space these objects occupy satisfy
the definition above. In particular, the shape does not depend on the size and placement in
space of the object.

For instance, a "d" and a "p" have the same shape, as they can be perfectly superimposed
if the "d" is translated to the right by a given distance, rotated upside down and magnified
by a given factor (see Procrustes superimposition for details).

However, a mirror image could be called a different shape. For instance, a "b" and a "p"
have a different shape, at least when they are constrained to move within a two-
dimensional space like the page on which they are written.

Even though they have the same size, there's no way to perfectly superimpose them by
translating and rotating them along the page. Similarly, within a three-dimensional space,
a right hand and a left hand have a different shape, even if they are the mirror images of
each other.

Shapes may change if the object is scaled non-uniformly. For example, a sphere becomes
an ellipsoid when scaled differently in the vertical and horizontal directions. In other
words, preserving axes of symmetry (if they exist) is important for preserving shapes.
Also, shape is determined by only the outer boundary of an object.

Congruence and similarity

Objects that can be transformed into each other by rigid transformations and mirroring
(but not scaling) are congruent. An object is therefore congruent to its mirror image (even
if it is not symmetric), but not to a scaled version. Two congruent objects always have
either the same shape or mirror image shapes, and have the same size.

Objects that have the same shape or mirror image shapes are called geometrically similar,
whether or not they have the same size. Thus, objects that can be transformed into each
other by rigid transformations, mirroring, and uniform scaling are similar. Similarity is
preserved when one of the objects
Homeomorphism

A more flexible definition of shape takes into consideration the fact that realistic shapes
are often deformable, e.g. a person in different postures, a tree bending in the wind or a
hand with different finger positions.

One way of modeling non-rigid movements is by homeomorphisms. Roughly speaking, a

homeomorphism is a continuous stretching and bending of an object into a new shape.
Thus, a square and a circle are homeomorphic to each other, but a sphere and a donut are
not. An often-repeated mathematical joke is that topologists cannot tell their coffee cup
from their donut,[3] since a sufficiently pliable donut could be reshaped to the form of a
coffee cup by creating a dimple and progressively enlarging it, while preserving the donut
hole in a cup's handle.
 RECTANGLE
In Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is a quadrilateral with four right angles. It can
also be defined as an equiangular quadrilateral, since equiangular means that all of its
angles are equal (360°/4 = 90°).

It can also be defined as a parallelogram containing a right angle. A rectangle with four
sides of equal length is a square. The term oblong is occasionally used to refer to a non-
square rectangle.[1][2][3] A rectangle with vertices ABCD would be denoted as ABCD.

The word rectangle comes from the Latin rectangulus, which is a combination
of rectus (as an adjective, right, proper) and angulus (angle).

A crossed rectangle is a crossed (self-intersecting) quadrilateral which consists of two

opposite sides of a rectangle along with the two diagonals. [4] It is a special case of
an antiparallelogram, and its angles are not right angles. Other geometries, such
as spherical, elliptic, and hyperbolic, have so-called rectangles with opposite sides equal
in length and equal angles that are not right angles.

Rectangles are involved in many tiling problems, such as tiling the plane by rectangles or
tiling a rectangle by polygons.

Characterizations
A convex quadrilateral is a rectangle if and only if it is any one of the following:

 a parallelogram with at least one right angle

 a parallelogram with diagonals of equal length

 a parallelogram ABCD where triangles ABD and DCA are congruent

 an equiangular quadrilateral

 a quadrilateral with four right angles

 a quadrilateral where the two diagonals are equal in length and bisect each other
 a convex quadrilateral with successive sides a, b, c, d whose area is .

 a convex quadrilateral with successive sides a, b, c, d whose area is

Alternative hierarchy

De Villiers defines a rectangle more generally as any quadrilateral with axes of

symmetry through each pair of opposite sides. This definition includes both right-angled
rectangles and crossed rectangles.

Each has an axis of symmetry parallel to and equidistant from a pair of opposite sides,
and another which is the perpendicular bisector of those sides, but, in the case of the
crossed rectangle, the first axis is not an axis of symmetry for either side that it bisects.

Quadrilaterals with two axes of symmetry, each through a pair of opposite sides, belong
to the larger class of quadrilaterals with at least one axis of symmetry through a pair of
opposite sides. These quadrilaterals comprise isoscele

Crossed rectangles

A crossed (self-intersecting) quadrilateral consists of two opposite sides of a non-self-

intersecting quadrilateral along with the two diagonals. Similarly, a crossed rectangle is a
crossed quadrilateral which consists of two opposite sides of a rectangle along with the
two diagonals.

It has the same vertex arrangement as the rectangle. It appears as two identical triangles
with a common vertex, but the geometric intersection is not considered a vertex.

A crossed quadrilateral is sometimes likened to a bow tie or butterfly. A three-

dimensional rectangular wire frame that is twisted can take the shape of a bow tie. A
crossed rectangle is sometimes called an "angular eight".

The interior of a crossed rectangle can have a polygon density of ±1 in each triangle,
dependent upon the winding orientation as clockwise or counterclockwise.

A crossed rectangle is not equiangular. The sum of its interior angles (two acute and
two reflex), as with any crossed quadrilateral, is 720°.
A rectangle and a crossed rectangle are quadrilaterals with the following properties in
common:

 Opposite sides are equal in length.

 The two diagonals are equal in length.

 It has two lines of reflectional symmetry and rotational symmetry of order 2

(through 180°).

Other rectangles

In spherical geometry, a spherical rectangle is a figure whose four edges are great
circle arcs which meet at equal angles greater than 90°. Opposite arcs are equal in length.
The surface of a sphere in Euclidean solid geometry is a non-Euclidean surface in the
sense of elliptic geometry. Spherical geometry is the simplest form of elliptic geometry.
In elliptic geometry, an elliptic rectangle is a figure in the elliptic plane whose four
edges are elliptic arcs which meet at equal angles greater than 90°. Opposite arcs are
equal in length.

In hyperbolic geometry, a hyperbolic rectangle is a figure in the hyperbolic plane whose

four edges are hyperbolic arcs which meet at equal angles less than 90°. Opposite arcs are
equal in length.