Triangles Facts for Kids: What do you think a pizza slice and a house roof have in common? That’s right, they both have the rectangular shape.
Triangles are three sided polygons. A triangle is a shape formed when three straight lines meet. All triangles have three sides and three corners or angles. The point where two sides of a triangle meet are called a vertex. Any side of a triangle can be its base but typically the bottom line or longer line is known as its base.
If you know two of the angles in a triangle, you can always figure out the third because they must add up to 180 degrees. For example if two angles in a triangle add up to 70 degrees, the third angle will be 110 degrees. The longest side of a triangle is opposite the largest angle in a triangle and the shortest side of a triangle is opposite the smallest angle. The longest side of a right angle triangle is called the hypotenuse. It is opposite the right angle.
There are four main types of triangles. These are the right angle triangle, scalene triangle, isosceles triangle and equilateral triangle. A right angle triangle is how it sounds, a triangle with one angle that is 90 degrees. A scalene triangle is one where none of the sides are the same length. An equilateral triangle is a triangle with all equal sides and angles. An isosceles triangle is a triangle with two equal sides. As a result of having two equal sides, two of the angles will be the same too.
The two types of angles that a triangle can have are acute angles or obtuse angles. We have already spoken about right angles. Acute angles are angles that are less than 90 degrees and triangles with acute angles are called acute triangles. Obtuse angles are angles that are greater than 90 degrees and triangles with obtuse angles are known as obtuse triangles. Acute and obtuse triangles are called oblique triangles.
Look around your house and see what kind of objects are triangular in shape. A few examples of triangular shapes are pizza slices, the roofs of houses, sandwiches and traffic signs. The faces of the Egyptian Pyramids are also triangular in shape.
We hope you enjoyed learning about triangles, come and check out these articles about some other shapes: Circles, Pentagon, Polygons, Spheres, Octagons and Rectangles.
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