Solid geometry in the context of Geographic databases

Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to Euclid, an ancient Greek mathematician, which he described in his textbook on geometry, Elements. Euclid's approach consists in assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms (postulates) and deducing many other propositions (theorems) from these. One of those is the parallel postulate which relates to parallel lines on a Euclidean plane. Although many of Euclid's results had been stated earlier, Euclid was the first to organize these propositions into a logical system in which each result is proved from axioms and previously proved theorems.

The Elements begins with plane geometry, still taught in secondary school (high school) as the first axiomatic system and the first examples of mathematical proofs. It goes on to the solid geometry of three dimensions. Much of the Elements states results of what are now called algebra and number theory, explained in geometrical language.

The surface area (symbol A) of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of one-dimensional curves, or of the surface area for polyhedra (i.e., objects with flat polygonal faces), for which the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces. Smooth surfaces, such as a sphere, are assigned surface area using their representation as parametric surfaces. This definition of surface area is based on methods of infinitesimal calculus and involves partial derivatives and double integration.

A general definition of surface area was sought by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann Minkowski at the turn of the twentieth century. Their work led to the development of geometric measure theory, which studies various notions of surface area for irregular objects of any dimension. An important example is the Minkowski content of a surface.

A sphere (from Greek σφαῖρα, sphaîra) is a surface analogous to the circle, a curve. In solid geometry, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the center of the sphere, and the distance r is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.

The sphere is a fundamental surface in many fields of mathematics. Spheres and nearly-spherical shapes also appear in nature and industry. Bubbles such as soap bubbles take a spherical shape in equilibrium. The Earth is often approximated as a sphere in geography, and the celestial sphere is an important concept in astronomy. Manufactured items including pressure vessels and most curved mirrors and lenses are based on spheres. Spheres roll smoothly in any direction, so most balls used in sports and toys are spherical, as are ball bearings.

In mathematics, a ball is the solid figure bounded by a sphere; it is also called a solid sphere. It may be a closed ball (including the boundary points that constitute the sphere) or an open ball (excluding them).

These concepts are defined not only in three-dimensional Euclidean space but also for lower and higher dimensions, and for metric spaces in general. A ball in n dimensions is called a hyperball or n-ball and is bounded by a hypersphere or (n−1)-sphere. Thus, for example, a ball in the Euclidean plane is the same thing as a disk, the planar region bounded by a circle. In Euclidean 3-space, a ball is taken to be the region of space bounded by a 2-dimensional sphere. In a one-dimensional space, a ball is a line segment.

Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or plane area refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while surface area refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-dimensional object. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat. It is the two-dimensional analogue of the length of a curve (a one-dimensional concept) or the volume of a solid (a three-dimensional concept).Two different regions may have the same area (as in squaring the circle); by synecdoche, "area" sometimes is used to refer to the region, as in a "polygonal area".

The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size. In the International System of Units (SI), the standard unit of area is the square metre (written as m), which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the same area as three such squares. In mathematics, the unit square is defined to have area one, and the area of any other shape or surface is a dimensionless real number.

A cylinder (from Ancient Greek κύλινδρος (kúlindros) 'roller, tumbler') has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.

A cylinder may also be defined as an infinite curvilinear surface in various modern branches of geometry and topology. The shift in the basic meaning—solid versus surface (as in a solid ball versus sphere surface)—has created some ambiguity with terminology. The two concepts may be distinguished by referring to solid cylinders and cylindrical surfaces. In the literature the unadorned term "cylinder" could refer to either of these or to an even more specialized object, the right circular cylinder.

In geometry, a solid of revolution is a solid figure obtained by rotating a plane figure around some straight line (the axis of revolution), which may not intersect the generatrix (except at its boundary). The surface created by this revolution and which bounds the solid is the surface of revolution.

Assuming that the curve does not cross the axis, the solid's volume is equal to the length of the circle described by the figure's centroid multiplied by the figure's area (Pappus's second centroid theorem).

The Spherics (Greek: τὰ σφαιρικά, tà sphairiká) is a three-volume treatise on spherical geometry written by the Hellenistic mathematician Theodosius of Bithynia in the 2nd or 1st century BC.

Book I and the first half of Book II establish basic geometric constructions needed for spherical geometry using the tools of Euclidean solid geometry, while the second half of Book II and Book III contain propositions relevant to astronomy as modeled by the celestial sphere.

In solid geometry, a face is a flat surface (a planar region) that forms part of the boundary of a solid object. For example, a cube has six faces in this sense.

In more modern treatments of the geometry of polyhedra and higher-dimensional polytopes, a "face" is defined in such a way that it may have any dimension. The vertices, edges, and (2-dimensional) faces of a polyhedron are all faces in this more general sense.

In geometry, a net of a polyhedron is an arrangement of non-overlapping edge-joined polygons in the plane that can be folded (along edges) to become the faces of the polyhedron. Polyhedral nets are a useful aid to the study of polyhedra and solid geometry in general, as they allow for physical models of polyhedra to be constructed from material such as thin cardboard.

An early instance of polyhedral nets appears in the works of Albrecht Dürer, whose 1525 book A Course in the Art of Measurement with Compass and Ruler (Unterweysung der Messung mit dem Zyrkel und Rychtscheyd ) included nets for the Platonic solids and several of the Archimedean solids. These constructions were first called nets in 1543 by Augustin Hirschvogel.

An ogive (/ˈoʊdʒaɪv/ OH-jyve) is the roundly tapered end of a two- or three-dimensional object. Ogive curves and surfaces are used in engineering, architecture, woodworking, and ballistics.