A point of three-phase coexistence is termed a triple point for a one-component system, since, from Gibbs' phase rule, this condition is only achieved for a single point in the phase diagram (F = 2-3+1 = 0). For tricritical points to be observed, one needs a mixture with more components. It can be shown that three is the minimum number of components for which these points can appear. In this case, one may have a two-dimensional region of three-phase coexistence (F = 2-3+3 = 2) (thus, each point in this region corresponds to a triple point). This region will terminate in two critical lines of two-phase coexistence; these two critical lines may then terminate at a single tricritical point. This point is therefore "twice critical", since it belongs to two critical branches. Indeed, its critical behavior is different from that of a conventional critical point: the upper critical dimension is lowered from d=4 to d=3 so the classical exponents turn out to apply for real systems in three dimensions (but not for systems whose spatial dimension is 2 or lower).