What is the difference between triangle and square

Some shapes are polygons and some are not. One of the easiest ways to narrow down what type of shape something is is figuring out if it's a polygon. A polygon is comprised of straight lines that do not cross. Which of the shapes below are polygons and which are not? The circle and oval are not polygons, which means their area and perimeter are calculated differently.

If the shape you're looking at is a parallelogram, it's generally easier to calculate its area and perimeter than if it isn't a parallelogram.

But how do you identify a parallelogram? It's right there in the name—parallel. A parallelogram is a four-sided polygon with two sets of parallel sides. Squares, rectangles, and rhombuses are all parallelograms. Squares and rectangles use the same basic formulas for area—length times height. They're also very easy to find perimeter for, as you just add all the sides together. Rhombuses are where things get tricky, because you multiply the diagonals together and divide by two.

To determine what kind of parallelogram you're looking at, ask yourself if it has all degree angles. If yes, it's either a square or a rectangle. A rectangle has two sides that are slightly longer than the others, whereas a square has sides of all equal length. Either way, you calculate the area by multiplying the length times the height and perimeter by adding all four sides together.

If no, it's probably a rhombus, which looks like if you took a square or rectangle and skewed it in either direction. In this case, you'll find the area by multiplying the two diagonals together and dividing by two. Perimeter is found the same way that you would find the perimeter of a square or rectangle. Formulas for shapes that don't have four sides can get quite tricky, so your best bet is to memorize them.

If you have trouble keeping them straight, try memorizing the Greek words for numbers, such as:. Tri : three, as in triple, meaning three of something. Tetra : four, as in the number of squares in a Tetris block. Penta : five, as in the Pentagon in Washington D. Hexa : six, as in hexadecimal, the six-digit codes often used for color in web and graphic design. Septa : seven, as in Septa, the female clergy of Game of Thrones' religion, which has seven gods.

Ennea : nine, as in an enneagram, a common model for human personalities. Deca : ten, as in a decathlon, in which athletes complete ten events. If you're prepping for the ACT and want a little additional help on your geometry, check out this guide to coordinate geometry!

Can't get enough of ACT math? This guide to polygons on the ACT will help you prepare with useful strategies and practice problems! Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. Likewise, there are a lot of different combinations of side lengths and angles that all make a triangle. The word "rectangle" is more like the word "dog".

Dogs are more of a kind than mammals--it's only one species, but there are still a lot of different breeds of dogs. If the word "rectangle" is like the word "dog" then the word "square" is something like the word "German shepherd". I pick this analogy because 1 German shepherds are a breed of dog that all look a lot alike--kind of like squares, and also because 2 German shepherds are dogs, and one of the trickier things about rectangles and squares is that squares are one specific kind of rectangle.

When children learn the word "triangle" they often are learning it from a single picture of a triangle or a small number of different triangles. This results in the misconception that triangles have to not only have 3 sides and 3 angles, but also have to have the sides be about the same length and often children will believe that triangles have to have its flat side on the bottom, and point at the top, and it has to look like a tooth or a witches hat.

When presented with a variety of triangles, they may believe that only the point up equilateral triangle is really a triangle, and that the other 3-sided shapes are not triangles because they are too different from the standard equilateral triangle. PreK-K teachers can help avoid this misconception by using examples of several different shaped triangles when teaching about triangles and shapes It's also good to work with manipulatives and pictures of triangles in different positions so that children get used to seeing triangles turned a different way from having a side horizontally on the bottom.

It's an advantage to address this particular misconception as early as possible, because once children internalize a definition of triangle, it's hard to correct that idea--if you're encountering this misconception in children at second grade or above, then it tends to take many exposures and corrections to replace the old idea with a new idea. Another misconception that children often have about triangles is to accept approximate triangles because the overall shape looks triangular.

One explanation for this might be that they are used to accepting as a triangle something that they or a classmate drew when intending to draw a triangle, but that had some flaws. This is a rather different misunderstanding, and needs a different sort of teaching approach. The key thing to understand this better is to practice looking for properties: count the sides, count the corners count the sides count the corners are the sides straight?

Being able to put a name to the triangle that fits your mental picture equilateral and naming the triangles that don't fit your mental picture but are still triangles, helps with creating the mental space for all of the different possible triangle shapes. Both the diagonals are equal and bisect each other at right angles. It can also be called a rhombus because it fulfills the properties of a rhombus which has four equal sides and its opposite sides are parallel to each other.

Yes, a square is a rectangle because it possesses all the properties of a rectangle. Hence, a square can be called a special type of rectangle. Learn Practice Download. Difference Between Square and Rectangle In geometry , there are many shapes like circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, cubes, cones, cylinders, and so on. What is a Square and a Rectangle?

Important Properties of a Square and a Rectangle 3. Difference Between a Square and a Rectangle 4. Why is a Square Called a Rectangle? Important Properties of a Square and a Rectangle. Attracting edge and stronglt edge reinforced walks.

Merkl and S. Edge-reinforced random walk on a ladder. Nonconvergence to unstable points in urn models and stochastic approximation. A survey of random processes with reinforcement. Reinforced random walks on the d -dimensional integer lattice. Technical report , Purdue University, Calculus on Manifolds.