Point groups in three dimensions the finite subgroups of SO(3), are: the cyclic groups "C" (the rotation group of a canonical pyramid), the dihedral groups "D" (the rotation group of a uniform prism, or canonical bipyramid), and the rotation groups "T", "O" and "I" of a regular tetrahedron, octahedron/cube and icosahedron/dodecahedron. In particular, the dihedral groups "D", "D" etc. are the rotation groups of plane regular polygons embedded in three-dimensional space, and such a figure may be considered as a degenerate regular prism. Therefore, it is also called a "dihedron" (Greek: solid with two faces), which explains the name "dihedral group". The rotation group of
Three-dimensional space that are normal to ). Elliptic cones are sometimes considered to be degenerate quadric surfaces as well. Both the hyperboloid of one sheet and the hyperbolic paraboloid are ruled surfaces, meaning that they can be made up from a family of straight lines. In fact, each has two families of generating lines, the members of each family are disjoint and each member one family intersects, with just one exception, every member of the other family. Each family is called a regulus. Another way of viewing three-dimensional space is found in linear algebra, where the idea of independence is crucial. Space