Laser Cuts

Place the shapes in the ring of fire to reveal their cross section. Which shapes contain a circle? Which shapes contain a triangle?

Can you use the cube to find a hexagon?

Which shape contains the ten-sided decagon?

The ring of fire takes a slice through 3-dimensional shapes to reveal hidden 2-dimensional shapes. For example, in the cone you will find a circle, an ellipse (a slightly squashed circle), and a parabola (the arc of a ball thrown through the air).

Some shapes contain surprises, for example did you know that the cylinder contains a rectangle, or that a cube contains a hexagon! If a cube fell into a 2-dimensional world, the people of that world might see a square, a triangle or a hexagon, depending on the angle the cube makes with the 2-dimensional world. In the same way, it might be difficult for you to imagine what a 4-dimensional shape looks like, but different slices will look like different 3-dimensional shapes.