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English: Cardboard boxes are industrially prefabricated boxes, primarily used for packaging goods and materials. Specialists in industry seldom use the term cardboard because it does not denote a specific material.

The term cardboard may refer to a variety of heavy paper-like materials, including card stock, corrugated fiberboard, or paperboard. The meaning of the term may depend on the locale, contents, construction, and personal choice.

In business and industry, material producers, container manufacturers, packaging engineers, and standards organizations, try to use more specific terminology. There is still not complete and uniform usage. Often the term “cardboard” is avoided because it does not define any particular material.

Broad divisions of paper-based packaging materials are:

• Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags, or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets.

• Paperboard, sometimes known as cardboard, is generally thicker (usually over 0.25 mm or 10 points) than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight (grammage) above 224 g/m², but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single- or multi-ply.

• Corrugated fiberboard sometimes known as corrugated board or corrugated cardboard, is a combined paper-based material consisting of a fluted corrugated medium and one or two flat liner boards.

Crafts and entertainment

Cardboard and other paper-based materials (paperboard, corrugated fiberboard, etc.) can have a post-primary life as a cheap material for the construction of a range of projects, among them being science experiments, children's toys,costumes and insulative lining. Some children enjoy playing inside boxes.

A common cliché is that, if presented with a large and expensive new toy, a child will quickly become bored with the toy and play with the box instead. Although this is usually said somewhat jokingly, children certainly enjoy playing with boxes, using their imagination to portray the box as an infinite variety of objects. One example of this from popular culture is Calvin of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, who often used a cardboard box for imaginative purposes from a "transmogrifier" to a time machine.

So prevalent is the cardboard box's reputation as a plaything that in 2005 a cardboard box was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame in the US, one of very few non-brand-specific toys to be honoured with inclusion. As a result, a toy "house" (actually a log cabin) made from a large cardboard box was added to the Hall, housed at the Strong - National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

The Metal Gear series of stealth video games has a running gag involving a cardboard box as an in-game item, which can be used by the player to try to sneak through places without getting caught by enemy sentries.

Housing and furniture

Living in a cardboard box is stereotypically associated with homelessness. However, in 2005, Melbourne architect Peter Ryan designed a house composed largely of cardboard. More common are small seatings or little tables made from corrugated cardboard. Cardboard displays are often found in self-service shops.

Damping by crushing

Mass and viscosity of the enclosed air help together with the limited stiffness of boxes to damp the velocity of oncoming objects. In 2012, British stuntman Gary Connery safely landed via wingsuit without deploying his parachute, landing on a 3.6 m high crushable "runway" (landing zone) built with thousands of cardboard boxes.