Is it possible to make a 6 sided shape equal on all sides?

Question

I need to know if it is possible to make a six sided shape equal on all sides.I am buliding something like a barrier around a plant in the ground of of wood, and we are trying to figure out how to cut the timber. What angle can we use? Or what degree do we need to use so that all sides match up and there is no sides having space in between. Please help, thank you for taking the time to read this question.

alright, its a hexagon, I got it,... And by the way not all "hexagons" are always equal... all I was asking for was the angle, so DUH! right back at ya'll that don't know how to read...

Answer 1

Everyone here, has the correct answer, even if it seems they are contradicting each other....

To create a 6 sided (same lengths on all sides) enclosure, you need a total of 120 degree angle between two sides.... if you are going to miter the corners (cut both sides the same angle)... then you need a 60 degree angle cut, on each side. If you happen to be working with 90 degree stock... then you want to cut 30 degrees off of it, to bring it down to the 60 degrees you need to make the correct half of the 120 degree angle. Simple eh? lol...

Now, what you didnt say, is what you are using to make the enclosure.....Just for the sake of argument, let's assume you are going to use landscape timbers, and stack them up to the desired height... what you want to do with them, is cut them all with a miter saw, at 30 degree angle.... both ends.
It would look something like this:
\===============/
The long side of every piece (tip of angle to tip of angle) should be the same length for all the pieces. (Tip) One easy way to keep stacked timbers together, is to predrill them with a hole at a fixed location... that is... all of holes in the same spot... .then, when you stack the parts....drive a piece of concrete re-rod down thru them, in to the ground.

Now, if you are building something similar to a fence.... that is, with upright posts... then you want to cut the posts on a tablesaw, at a 30 degree angle. Two posts to a corner, each cut at 30 degrees, one on the left side of the post, one on the right. Then the posts are attached with the cut sides put face to face.

If you wanted to make an eight sided object (Octagon)... then instead of using 30 degree angles, you would use 22 1/2 degrees

Hope this helped clear up some of the answers you were getting.

Have Fun!

Answer 2

You'd want to set up a hexagon (6 sides). To ensure that they matched up equally, you'd want to cut equal lengths of board so they'd match up at 120 degree angles.

It's 120 degrees because the formula for total degrees in a polygon is # of sides minus 2 times 180 degrees. This creats a total of 720 degrees for a hexagon. Divide 720 by 6 and you get 120 degrees for each of the 6 angles.

Answer 3

A six-sided polygon is called a hexagon. A hexagon whose sides are all the same length must have internal angles that are the same degree and is called a regular hexagon. The angles of a regular hexagon must be 120 degrees each. The length of the sides don't matter as much as the degree since if you make one side 1 feet long, then all the other sides must be 1 feet long in order to retain the 120 degrees required to make it a regular hexagon. I believe people are stating 60 degrees because that is the exterior angle of the hexagon.

Answer 4

2 tetrahedrons glued together provide another example. So an equilateral triangle will do, as well as any isosceles triangle. You can see it by dilating the original hexahedron along the direction orthogonal to the gluing plane. Actually, you can form a tetrahedron whose 4 faces will be congruent to any triangle having three acute angles. From this you also get an hexaedron by gluing 2 of them. By Euler's formula Vertices + Faces = Edges + 2. If we call n the number of sides of P, then V <= 6n / 3, since each vertex belongs to at least 3 faces. F = 6, and E = 6n/2 = 3n, since each edge belongs to exactly 2 faces. We get 2 n + 6 >= 3n + 2, so n <= 4. Since the case n = 3 is solved, it only remains to see the possible quadrilaterals which work. It is true, but needs a little checking, that if you dilate a cube in the direction of big diagonal, then you obtain an hexahedron whose faces are a rhombus. So P can be any rhombus. Now by doing the floor plan of your hexahedron, like if you wanted to build it by cutting folding and gluing, you see that, all the edges have to have the same length. Easy to see but hard to explain. Just start with a,b,c,d the lengths of the sides. Put 4 faces around one, and the only way you can get them up and glue them is that all edges be same length. Anyway, that's your answer: P has to be either a rhombus, or any triangle with 3 acute angles. Edit: right, I overlooked a family of quadrilaterals which have one diagonal as an axis of symmetry. Edit: Oh well. They would have to be rhombuses anyway. I believe Scythian's construction gives all quadrilaterals. To see which ones you get, start with any triangle ABC isosceles in B with top angle less than 2pi/3. Complete it with D to make a rhombus. Let E be the ellipse centered at B and containing ACD. Then a quadrilateral P having ABCD' as vertices in that order, will be a solution if D' is on the ellipse E. This ellipse is the intersection between the plane containing ABC and a cylinder which contains 6 of the vertices of the hexahedron, the 2 last ones being on its axis.

Answer 5

I only post this so you won't have to get flamed with these comments again. If you are doing a full circle with many sides, you should remember that the total of the angles for the sides will have to add up to 360 degrees (by definition a full circle). So you can take the number of sides desired and devide into 360 to get the angle between each side. Example: if you wanted 8 sides, 360/8=45 degrees between sides.

Answer 6

A fence post is a six sided shape and you can make them all the same size.. take 6 matches and create some patterns and see which one works best for you.
Good Luck

Answer 7

well i work for an architect, so im useing a drawing program right now. and i drew a 6 sided polygon and no matter what size the "legs" are all being equal the angle is always 120 degrees

Answer 8

a hexagon is a six sided shape and i think all the sides are equal..Good Luck

Answer 9

It's called a cube. Six sides, and all exactly the same size and shape.

Answer 10

Its called a hexagon, 60 degrees is the angle you want to use.