Wedges have been useful as tools for thousands of years. Wedges are made up of different shapes: two triangles and three quadrilaterals. A wedge is a triangular prism with five faces, nine edges, and six vertices. These simple machines can be tools such as chisels for carving, arrowheads for hunting, axe blades for chopping, and knife edges for cutting. Wedges have two inclined planes, and they can be short and thick or longer and thinner. The Investigators identify wedges around the house such as the claw of a hammer, the head of a crow bar, a screwdriver, a wedge cushion and a wedge of cheese. Wedges can push things apart, help lift things or keep things from moving. Shims are wedges that can be used to make things level. Teeth can be wedge shaped, a platypus shovels mud with its wedge-shaped bill, a woodpecker has a wedge shaped beak, and swimmers create a wedge shape when they dive. An archaeologist displays ancient wedge-shaped tools and shows how they were made.