BaseA cylinder has two bases: parallel circles of the same size. The lower one is seen through the side here.
Lateral surfaceA can's label, cut off and unrolled, lies flat as a rectangle. Its area is the lateral area.
RadiusThe radius of the cylinder is the radius of its base.
HeightAlso called the altitude. It is measured straight across from one base to the other.
AxisThe axis passes through the centers of the two bases. Turning a rectangle about one of its sides sweeps out a cylinder round this line.
Cube 3
FaceA cube has six faces, all squares of the same size. Three can be seen from here.
EdgeA cube has twelve edges, all the same length. The three at the back are dashed.
VertexA cube has eight vertices. The plural of vertex is vertices.
How this list was compiled: Every name and detail checked on 2026-09-30 against OpenStax Prealgebra 2e, section 9.6 Solve Geometry Applications: Volume and Surface Area (the bases, height and radius of a cylinder, the label of a can unrolled into a rectangle, the faces of a rectangular solid and a cube), https://openstax.org/books/prealgebra-2e/pages/9-6-solve-geometry-applications-volume-and-surface-area; against George Wentworth and David Eugene Smith, Solid Geometry, 1911, public domain (bases, lateral surface and altitude of a cylinder, the cylinder of revolution and its axis, faces, edges and vertices of a polyhedron, the cube), https://archive.org/details/wentworthssolidg00wentrich; and against Wikipedia, Cylinder (bases, height, radius, axis, lateral area) and Cube (six faces, twelve edges, eight vertices), text only. Licence: own work
The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-30 from plain geometry; nothing traced. Licence: own work
How it works
Label the parts of a cylinder on the first drawing: its two bases, the lateral surface between them, the radius, the height and the axis. The second drawing gives the parts of a cube: faces, edges and vertices.
Read the full guide
The cylinder
Numbers 1 to 5 are on the cylinder. The two circles at the top and bottom are the bases. The curved side between them is the lateral surface. The height is the distance between the bases, and the axis is the line through their centers.
The cube
Numbers 6 to 8 are on the cube. Each flat square is a face, each line where two faces meet is an edge, and each corner is a vertex. The dashed lines are the edges at the back.
Cut the label off a can and unroll it: it lies flat as a rectangle. That is the lateral surface of a cylinder.
Questions and answers
What are the parts of a cylinder?
Two bases, which are parallel circles of the same size, and the lateral surface, the curved side that joins them. A cylinder is measured by its radius, which is the radius of a base, and its height, the distance between the bases.
What is the axis of a cylinder?
The line that passes through the centers of the two bases. Turning a rectangle about one of its sides makes a cylinder, and that side lies on the axis.
What is the height of a cylinder?
The distance between its two bases, also called the altitude. In the cylinders of school geometry the side is perpendicular to the bases.
What are the parts of a cube?
Faces, edges and vertices. A cube has six square faces, twelve edges of the same length and eight vertices. An edge is where two faces meet, and a vertex is a corner where edges meet.