Lemon (geometry)

A lemon is a fruit that has a shape like an oval, but it's a little bit lumpy and bumpy. In geometry, we use the word "lemon" to describe a 3D shape that looks like a lemon.

Imagine taking a ball and squeezing it a little bit so that it's not perfectly round anymore. The result would look a bit like a lemon. This shape is called an oblate spheroid. It's kind of like a circle that's been squished a bit, but instead of being 2D, it's 3D.

The reason we use the word "lemon" to describe this shape is that it looks a bit like a lemon if you imagine the lemon as a 3D object instead of just a fruit. If you're cutting a lemon to put in your tea, you might notice that it has kind of a roundish bottom and then it tapers up to a point at the top. That's kind of what an oblate spheroid looks like. It's roundish at the bottom and tapers up to a point at the top.

So, when we talk about lemons in geometry, we're not actually talking about the fruit. We're talking about a specific shape that looks like a lemon.