A cube is a three-dimensional shape with six square faces, twelve straight edges, and eight corners. Picture a die from a board game: that's a perfect cube. Each face is exactly the same size, and all the angles are right angles.

Cubes appear everywhere in daily life. Ice cubes, alphabet blocks, and Rubik's Cubes are all examples. Buildings and rooms are often shaped like cubes or rectangular boxes because those shapes are sturdy and efficient to construct.

In math, when you cube a number, you multiply it by itself three times. Five cubed (written as 5³) means 5 × 5 × 5, which equals 125. This is called “cubing” because if you built a cube where each edge was 5 units long, you'd need exactly 125 unit cubes to fill it completely.

The cube is one of five special solid shapes with perfect symmetry. Of these shapes, the cube is the one you'll see regularly in everyday objects, which shows how practical and pleasing its shape really is.