We probably do not pay attention to the shapes of lots of things we see around us every day. This is even though we would probably realize something was amiss if we saw them in a different shape. Imagine if you saw a circular television or a square coin.

The shapes of most everyday items are not random as you might think. Sugar is always in cubes, televisions are rectangular, and doughnuts are round for a reason. Most of the time, the shape is selected for practical reasons. Sometimes, they also have one or two things to do with the history of the product.

10 Why Sugar Is In Cubes

Sugar used to be sold in tall, hardened cones called sugar loaves. People went through quite an ordeal to get sugar ready for tea. Users first had to break the sugar apart with hammers or mallets that had chisels. Later, someone came up with the pliers-like sugar nippers to cut the hardened sugar into lumps.^[1]

Users who preferred granulated sugar shattered the lumps with a mortar and pestle or spice mill. Some just saved themselves all the trouble and inserted the whole cone into their cup of tea. Part of it melted into the tea, and they dried the rest for future use. Lucky buyers could also purchase already-broken sugar in lumps, which was sold by weight.

The whole problem with sugar came to a head in the 1840s when Juliana Rad sliced her finger while cutting sugar. Juliana was the wife of Jakub Krystof Rad, who owned a sugar mill. She complained to Jakub, asking why he could not make sugar that would fit in a cup and save people all the trouble. This made Jakub invent the first press that made sugar into cubes.

9 Why American Football Is A Prolate Spheroid

American football is played with a prolate spheroid ball because that is the shape of a pig’s bladder. The first American footballs were made of inflated pig bladders. Later, people started covering the bladder with stitched leather pieces. The balls still have those stitches, although they are only added to improve handling during play nowadays.^[2]

The shape of the ball did not change when the pig bladders were replaced with rubber in the late 1800s because the footballs were easier to throw that way. However, the change came at a cost. The balls are hard to pick up when they fall. It is also difficult to determine where they will land after a bounce, making it a nightmare for players and game developers.

Game developers often encounter difficulties when determining how to program the movements of the ball. While a regular soccer ball will go in one direction when it bounces, an American football can go in 30 different directions. Interestingly, early soccer balls were made of pig bladders but became rounder after the invention of rubber because they were easier to kick that way.

8 Why Airplane Windows Are Rounded

Airplane windows are round (or oval) because square windows become stressed when the cabin is pressurized. The continuous pressurization and depressurization of the airplane can cause the window to explode midflight, crashing the airplane.

The first commercial jetliner was the British de Havilland Comet. It launched in the 1950s with square windows. However, that turned fatal after two airplanes broke apart midair in 1953, killing 56 people in all.

Experts determined that the constant pressurization and depressurization of the airplane caused the four corners of the square windows to weaken with every flight. This culminated in the windows breaking, causing the airplane to explode and break apart midair. Square windows were quickly replaced with curved windows, which distributed the pressure over the surface of the window.^[3]

7 Why Cartoon Villains Are Triangular

Have you ever noticed that the villains in cartoons, live action, and animated movies all look alike? They often have horns, pointed ears, protruding chins, sharp eyes, pointed wings, V-shaped eyebrows, and devilish goatees.

This is not a coincidence. It is because the facial and body shapes of villains are often drawn or designed to resemble triangles with pointed tips. Filmmakers and animators use triangles for villains because our faces look triangular when we are angry. People also notice triangular and angry faces faster because they appear threatening.^[4]

For movie directors, threatening and angry means evil. This is something backed by science. In one study, volunteers noticed the mad expressions first when shown the faces of smiling, angry, and neutral people. They also noticed the downward-facing triangles first when shown pictures of four triangles pointing up, down, left, and right.

6 Why Stop Signs Are Octagonal

Stop signs are the only octagonal (eight-sided) road signs out there. They are like that because the government wants them to be easily distinguished from other road signs even when viewed from the back.

The first stop signs appeared in 1915. At the time, they were square with a white background. “STOP” was written in a black font. The sign worked at first until more cars started to appear on the roads in the 1920s.

The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) came up with a new eight-sided “STOP” sign that drivers could easily recognize, even if they did not understand or could not see whatever was written on it.

The eight-sided stop signs had yellow backgrounds with black lettering and outlines. The background only became red with white lettering in 1954. The AASHO changed to a red background because traffic lights already used red to mean “STOP.”^[5]

5 Why Televisions Were Once Round

Today’s televisions are rectangular because movies created before the invention of the television were made for projection on a rectangular screen. Interestingly, the first televisions were either circular or rectangular with round edges. Early televisions were round because they contained round cathode ray tubes (CRTs). CRTs were round because they were cheaper to make that way.^[6]

The first CRTs were not made for television but maintained their shape when televisions were invented. Rectangular CRTs came later, but they kept their round edges because it was difficult to make glass tubes with flat edges. Televisions became fully rectangular as manufacturers moved to liquid crystal displays and LED screens.

4 Why Doughnuts Have A Hole In The Center

The origin of the ring doughnut remains hotly debated despite its popularity. People have come up with all sorts of theories about how doughnuts ended up with a hole in the center. One says that a Native American man unwittingly made the first ring doughnut when he shot an arrow into the center of a pastry while aiming at a woman.

Another says that some bakers created the first ring doughnuts. Supposedly, when they added eggs to their dough, the final products were often uncooked in the center but overcooked at the edges. They created the holes to eliminate the gooey centers.^[7]

However, most sources credit a sailor named Hanson Gregory (1832–1921) as the inventor of the ring doughnut even though they do not agree on a single story. One version says that Gregory invented the ring doughnut when he forcefully put some pastries he was eating through a spoke of his ship’s wheel in 1847.

According to another theory, he created the hole to make his doughnut lighter after six of his friends fell overboard because their pastries were too heavy. A third notion says that Gregory asked his mother to make the hole so that they could use lesser amounts of ingredients to make their doughnuts.

In a 1916 interview with The Washington Post, Gregory said that he created the first ring doughnut in 1858. He explained that doughnuts were made in twisting or diamond shapes at the time. They were called fried cakes and twisters.

The insides of the twisters and fried cakes were often uncooked long after their outsides were cooked, making them difficult to digest. Supposedly, Gregory invented the ring doughnut when he made a hole in the middle of a pastry before it was fried. That way, the inside and outside cooked at the same time.

3 Why Love Is Represented With A Heart Shape

Love is universally depicted with a heart shape that does not look like a human heart. Several theories have been proposed for this, but the two most common ones involve the extinct silphium plant and the philosopher Aristotle.

You have probably never heard of the silphium plant. It was popular among the Romans and Greeks who used it as a food seasoning, cough syrup, and contraceptive. They used it for contraceptives so much that they harvested it into extinction in the first century AD.^[8]

Some historians say that the seedpod of the silphium plant looks like the heart shape we use to represent love today. As the Greeks and Romans probably used the silphium plant to represent love and sex at that time, its seedpod became the universal symbol of love.

Other historians believe that we use the heart shape for love because Aristotle and a writer named Galen described the human heart as a three-chambered structure “with a small dent in the middle.” Artists and scientists in the Middle Ages supposedly created the first heart symbol when they tried to draw the heart from the description in ancient books.

2 Why Light Bulbs Are Round

The first light bulbs were spherical. Today’s light bulbs are not spherical, but they still maintain a teardrop shape, just like their predecessors. That is, they are slimmer at their bases and wider at the center with a pointy tip.^[9]

Early light bulbs were spherical because they produced light using filaments placed at their centers. A sphere is the most practical shape that allows a bulb to evenly deliver light across a certain area. Modern LED and compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs are not spherical but maintain the teardrop shape because makers want to stay with their traditions.

1 Why Coins Are Round

The earliest coins came in different shapes ranging from rectangles to circles with holes in their middles. The year in which the first coin appeared remains disputed even though historians agree that it was sometime around the sixth and fifth centuries BC.

Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the first coins were produced in Lydia, which was in today’s western Turkey. Herodotus added that the coin was made with electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. One account says that the coins were oval, while another claims that they were rectangular. Whichever is true, they were clearly not circles.

The Greeks and Romans later jumped on the coin fad. However, they made their coins round to prevent fraud. Coins of the day were made of valuable metals, and it was quite common for people to chip their corners off. They called this coin clipping. It was illegal and reduced the value of the coin.^[10]

The Greeks and Romans created the round coin because it could be quickly spotted if it were ever clipped. Other accounts say that round coins also won over other shapes because they were easier to count, stack, and mint.

The world around us consists of shapes. Every creature or object we see, touch or interact with, are made of shapes. Yet, these shapes are one thing we frequently ignore. We bet many people do not know the name of the shape of their eye. (The shape of your eye is close to a sphere even though it is not.)

So we wrote this list about the ten interesting facts about shapes. This list contains the most interesting and weird things you will not believe about many shapes. And that includes the many shapes we have proposed, discovered, invented and misidentified.

Top 10 Incredible Smells

10 We discovered a new shape

The discovery of a new shape is something that does not make the news very often. However, on July 27, 2018, scientists revealed the discovery of a new shape called the scutoid.

The scutoid is an irregular eight-faced, 3-dimensional shape we can best describe using a seven-faced pentagonal prism.

A pentagonal prism has seven faces. That is, a pentagon top and base with five rectangular sides. Now, imagine the top of one pentagon was cut off such that it becomes a six-sided hexagon. That cut extends into part of the two neighboring rectangular faces to create a new (but small) triangular face. That is a scutoid.

Scutoids naturally exist in the curvy part of human organs where epithelial cells assume the shape to allow them fit in, remain stable and save energy. Curiously, these cells exist as prisms and fulcrums in other parts of the organs and body.

9 We invented a new shape

When scientists are not discovering new shapes, they are inventing them. Enter the hemihelix, a new shape invented by Harvard scientists. In keeping with many inventions, the scientists created the shape by accident while trying to make helix-shaped rubber springs for another project.

Talking about helixes, the hemihelix is closely related to the helix. A helix is a spiral shape that goes upwards. You definitely know what springs, telephone cords and curved stairs look like. Those are helixes.

You can easily create a hemihelix from flexible helix materials like a telephone cord. You only need to keep twisting the cord until a part of it becomes a bit longer than the rest. The rest of the helix will assume the extremely curved and longer form as you continue twisting, giving you a hemihelix.

8 Pizza slices are not triangles

If you required one food to teach shapes in a classroom, that food would be pizzas. They are baked in circles, cut in triangles and stored in square boxes. Why is this so?

The truth is actually a bit more complicated.

You see, pizzas are round because that is the easiest way to bake a dough into a pizza. They are stored in square boxes because that is the easiest way to transport a circular object. However, they are not cut in triangles but in sectors.

A sector is a cut from the center of a circle to any part of its circumference (the curved line of a circle). A slice of pizza would have been a triangle if all three sides were straight lines. However, it is a circular sector because two sides are straight while the third is curved.

7 Paper is not a rectangle

If you asked most people the shape of a sheet of paper, they would tell you it is a rectangle. Is a sheet of paper really a rectangle? The answer is no and we will tell you why.

Shapes are categorized into 2-dimensional (2D) shapes and 3-dimensional (3D) shapes. 2D shapes have length and width (also called breadth) while 3D shapes have length, width and height (or depth).

Every shape we draw on paper are 2D shapes. They only have length and width even though we could use lines and shadows to make those drawings appear as 3D. However, everything that exists in real life is in 3D. That includes the paper we draw on.

That said, why do many people think paper is a 2D shape?

The answer lies in the major difference between 2D and 3D shapes. 2D shapes are always flat while 3D shapes are always thick. Most people think paper is flat even though it is actually thick. The thickness is very small and barely noticeable but it is there. Paper has length, breadth and depth.

Now that we are clear about that, what sort of 3D shape is paper? Paper is a cuboid. That is the 3D equivalent of the rectangle.

6 Shapes that look like circles

If we asked you to name any perfectly round 2-dimensional shape you know, you would have mentioned circles, wouldn’t you? Circles are obviously the only perfectly round 2D shapes out there.

Actually, sorry to burst your bubble but circles are not the only perfectly round 2D shapes in existence. They are a few other 2D shapes that are perfectly round just like circles. In fact, these shapes look so much like circles that it is impossible to tell them apart.

The 257-gon is one of those shapes. It is a polygon with 257 sides. A polygon is a shape with at least three sides of the same length and angle. An equilateral triangle is a three-sided polygon, a square is a four-sided polygon, a pentagon is a five-sided polygon and so on.

That said, the 257-gon is not the only circle impostor. The 65537-gon is another. It is a polygon with 65,537 sides.

5 Points are circles

Logic dictates that a set of points and lines can only be considered a shape if they create a form. That is, if all the lines touch one another so that they shut off their interior from its immediate surroundings. This means a point or line are not shapes and a three lined or sided shape (a triangle) is the simplest shape possible.

However, what if we told you a point is a shape, as in a circle? Would you believe that? Well, that is true but to understand why a point is a circle, we first need to understand why a circle is a “circle”.

You see, circles do not fit the conventional definition of shapes. While they have a form, a face and a (curved) line, they do not have sides. They do not have length or width either but a radius, which refers to any line that goes from their center to any part of that curved line.

Now, what is the smallest possible radius a circle could have? It is zero inches (or centimeters or whatever). If we drew a circle with a radius of zero inches, it would be a point. So what do we call that point? It is a circle, obviously.

Mathematicians actually call the point a “degenerate circle”. Degenerate as in, it does not follow the same rule that applies to other circles.

4 Spheres do not exist

There is a running argument in mathematics over whether spheres exist in nature. Now, you are probably thinking that spheres definitely do exist. Or are planets, moons and stars no longer spherical?

To answer this question, we first need to define a sphere. An object is considered a sphere if the distance between its center and curved surface is the same all through. Is the distance between the center and curved surface of any planet, star or moon consistent all through? No, they are not.

Because of their rotational speed and the internal and external forces acting on them, every planet, star and moon is flatter at its poles and wider at its equators. So the distance between their center and curved surface is longer at their sides and shorter at their tops and bottoms.

This means they are not spheres. So what shape are they? They are oblate spheroids. They look like spheres but are not spheres.

3 Squircles are not rounded squares

While you may have never heard of the squircle, you have probably seen it. You just confused it with a square. Squircles are a hybrid of squares and circles. They are essentially squares with round edges.

However, a squircle is not the same with a rounded square, a lookalike shape with similarly rounded edges. A rounded square still has a bit of that squarish edge even though it is less defined and may be indistinguishable to people who do not know the difference between both shapes. Meanwhile, squircles have smooth circular edges.

Apple frequently uses squircles in its designs and it is one of the reasons we find its products visually pleasing. The edges of iPhones are modeled after the circular edges of squircles. IPhone icons are also squircles. Curiously, before iOS 7, they were rounded squares.

2 Triangular tires are a thing

Have you ever tried driving a car with square wheels? Mythbusters once did and the ride was anything but comfortable for the driver and vehicle. There is a reason why tires and wheels are round.

However, can we make wheels and tires in shapes other than circles? Yes, we can make them out of Reuleaux triangles. The Reuleaux triangle looks like a triangle except that its sides are curved rather than straight.

To create one, you start with an equilateral triangle. Then you draw three circles of the same radius from each of the three angles of the triangle. The triangle and the three circular segments right outside its sides form the Reuleaux triangle.

The Reuleaux triangle acts like a circle in areas where a circle would not work or when you need something more ergonomic than circles. For instance, if you wanted to make a rotor that operates within a confined space, say a square, you use a Reuleaux triangle and not a circle.

Reuleaux triangles are also the go-to shape for making modern pencils since they offer a better grip. They could also be used to make wheels and tires for bicycle and maybe, cars. You could replace your circular bicycle wheels with a Reuleaux triangle wheel and it would work perfectly, with a bit of modification of course.

1 4D shapes are weird

We are familiar with 2D shapes like squares and 3D shapes like cubes, but how about 4D shapes like tesseracts?

The tesseract is to the cube, what the cube is to the square. To imagine what it looks like, think of a cube: A cube has six faces made up of six squares. Now imagine each of those square faces was a cube on its own. That is a tesseract. Six cubes in a cube.

4D shapes like tesseracts do not exist and are only the creation of the imagination of scientists. However, it is uncertain that we would even be able to perceive them even if they were real. But who knows? If we can perceive nonexistent 2D shapes, then we may be able to perceive 4D shapes too. But again, who knows?

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