Why are planets spherical?

It's something we kind of take for granted. Roses are red, and planets are spherical. That's just the way things are, right? After all, building model solar systems would be way more challenging if, instead of using little foam balls, we had to make a bunch of icosahedron-shaped planet models.

All of the planets are round because of gravity. When our Solar System was forming, gravity gathered billions of pieces of gas and dust into clumps which grew larger and larger to become the planets. The force of the collision of these pieces caused the newly forming planets to become hot and molten. The force of gravity, pulled this molten material inwards towards the planet's center into the shape of a sphere. Later, when the planets cooled, they stayed spherical. Planets are not perfectly spherical because they also spin. The spinning force acts against gravity and causes many planets to bulge out more around their equators.