In geometry, a circumscribed sphere of a polyhedron is a sphere that contains the polyhedron and touches each of the polyhedron's vertices. The word circumsphere is sometimes used to mean the same thing. When it exists, a circumscribed sphere need not be the smallest sphere containing the polyhedron; for instance, the tetrahedron formed by a vertex of a cube and its three neighbors has the same circumsphere as the cube itself, but can be contained within a smaller sphere having the three neighboring vertices on its equator. All regular polyhedra have circumscribed spheres, but most irregular polyhedra do not have all vertices lying on a common sphere, although it is still possible to define the smallest containing sphere for such shapes.
The radius of sphere circumscribed around a polyhedron P is called the circumradius of P. The circumscribed sphere is just like the circumscribed circle, except it is in 3-D.
See also
External links
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Circumsphere" from MathWorld.
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