noun
- plural of apothem; the perpendicular distance from the center of a regular polygon to the midpoint of one of its sides.
Usage: geometry; mathematics
Examples
- To find the area of a regular hexagon, you need to know the length of its apothems.
- The apothems of a square are equal to half the length of its side.
- In geometry class, we calculated the apothems of several regular polygons.
- The apothems help determine how far the center is from each edge of the polygon.
- For a regular pentagon, all apothems have the same length.