A wedge is a polyhedron of a rectangular base, with the faces are two isosceles triangles and two trapezoids that meet at the top of an edge.[1]. A prismatoid is defined as a polyhedron where its vertices lie on two parallel planes, with its lateral faces are triangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms;[2] the wedge is an example of prismatoid because of its top edge is parallel to the rectangular base.[3] The volume of a wedge is
where the base rectangle is by , is the apex edge length parallel to , and is the height from the base rectangle to the apex edge.[1]
Examples
In some special cases, the wedge is the right prism if all edges connecting triangles are equal in length, and the triangular faces are perpendicular to the rectangular base.[3]
Wedges can be created from decomposition of other polyhedra. For instance, the dodecahedron can be divided into a central cube with 6 wedges covering the cube faces. The orientations of the wedges are such that the triangle and trapezoid faces can connect and form a regular pentagon.
Two obtuse wedges can be formed by bisecting a regular tetrahedron on a plane parallel to two opposite edges.