Am I missing something?

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JulianMathHelp

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West High School has a math building in the shape of a regular polygon. When Mrs. Woods measured an interior angle of the polygon (which was inside her classroom), she got 135°.
a. How many sides does the math building have? Show how you got your answer.

After solving for the building was in the spape of, I got a regular octagon. What does it mean by "sides" in this case? Does it mean faces? If so, it is 8 correct?
 
The follow up question was this: If Mrs. Wood’s ceiling is 10 feet high and the length of one side of the building is 25 feet, find the volume of West High School’s math building.

Does that mean each face has a length of 25 feet? Meaning each rectangle face is 25 feet, and each regular octagon has a length of 25 feet (side length 25 feet)?

Is the length of the face of a shape, just the length of the shape?
 
The word "side" is not a technical term in math.

If you think of the shape as a plane figure, the octagon, a "side" is an edge. If you think of it as a solid figure (an octagonal prism), a "side" is a face (wall). So, yes, 8 is the answer.

Each wall is 25 feet long (wide) and 10 feet high. Again, each edge of the octagon is 25 feet long.

We don't talk about the length of an octagon.
 
JulianMathHelp said:
So the side is the face of the 3d shape, excluding the top and bottom face correct?
Click to expand...
No. Side can be a face of a 3D shape (a cube has 6 sides). If you exclude the top and bottom faces of a cube you are left with 4 side faces, or 4 sides. Not _the_ side.
 
JulianMathHelp said:
So the side is the face of the 3d shape, excluding the top and bottom face correct?
Click to expand...

Yes, more or less, if you correct the English grammar as lev888 just did, and say "a side is a [lateral] face".

But please keep in mind that they are not talking about faces of a polyhedron, but about sides of a building. This is not geometrical language, but practical language. A side of a building is a wall; it is inherently referring to what geometrically we would call the lateral faces, which are vertical. There is no need to generalize and think that "side" means "face", or even "lateral face". It may; but it is not technical language, meaning that it does not have as specific a definition as terms in geometry.
 
[EDIT: this was in response to a question that has been deleted or moved]

You can't (unless, perhaps, they mean a magnetic compass that shows north and includes what is essentially a protractor within it).

Please state the entire question in context.
 
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