A pyramid is a polyhedron with one face (known as the "base") a polygon and all the other faces triangles meeting at a common polygon vertex (known as the "apex"). A right pyramid is a pyramid for which the line joining the centroid of the base and the apex is perpendicular to the base. A regular pyramid is a right pyramid whose base is a regular polygon. An -gonal regular pyramid (denoted ) having equilateral triangles as sides is possible only for , 4, 5. These correspond to the regular tetrahedron, square pyramid, and pentagonal pyramid, respectively.
Canonical -pyramids are illustrated above for to 7.
The illustration above shows canonical -pyramids together with their duals. As can be seen, such pyramids are self-dual, corresponding to the fact that a pyramid's skeleton (a wheel graph) is a self-dual graph. Canonical -pyramids with unit midradius and midcenter at the origin have regular polygon base circumradius
(1)
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and base and apex at heights
(2)
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(3)
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giving an overall height
(4)
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The corresponding edges lengths, generalized diameter, circumradius, surface area, and volume are
(5)
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(6)
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(7)
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(8)
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Nets for the canonical -dipyramids for , 4, ..., 10 are illustrated above. The faces of the canonical -pyramid are isosceles triangles with angles
(9)
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(10)
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An arbitrary pyramid has a single cross-sectional shape whose lengths scale linearly with height. Therefore, the area of a cross section scales quadratically with height, decreasing from at the base () to 0 at the apex (assumed to lie at a height ). The area at a height above the base is therefore given by
(11)
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As a result, the volume of a pyramid, regardless of base shape or position of the apex relative to the base, is given by
(12)
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(13)
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(14)
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Note that this formula also holds for the cone, elliptic cone, etc.
The volume of a pyramid whose base is a regular -sided polygon with side is therefore
(15)
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Expressing in terms of the circumradius of the base gives
(16)
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(Lo Bello 1988, Gearhart and Schulz 1990).
The geometric centroid is the same as for the cone, given by
(17)
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The lateral surface area of a pyramid is
(18)
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where is the slant height and is the base perimeter.
Joining two pyramids together at their bases gives a dipyramid, also called a bipyramid.