Isohedral figureIn geometry, a tessellation of dimension 2 (a plane tiling) or higher, or a polytope of dimension 3 (a polyhedron) or higher, is isohedral or face-transitive if all its faces are the same. More specifically, all faces must be not merely congruent but must be transitive, i.e. must lie within the same symmetry orbit. In other words, for any two faces A and B, there must be a symmetry of the entire figure by translations, rotations, and/or reflections that maps A onto B.
Polytope compoundIn geometry, a polyhedral compound is a figure that is composed of several polyhedra sharing a common centre. They are the three-dimensional analogs of polygonal compounds such as the hexagram. The outer vertices of a compound can be connected to form a convex polyhedron called its convex hull. A compound is a facetting of its convex hull. Another convex polyhedron is formed by the small central space common to all members of the compound. This polyhedron can be used as the core for a set of stellations.
Rhombic dodecahedronIn geometry, the rhombic dodecahedron is a convex polyhedron with 12 congruent rhombic faces. It has 24 edges, and 14 vertices of 2 types. It is a Catalan solid, and the dual polyhedron of the cuboctahedron. The rhombic dodecahedron is a zonohedron. Its polyhedral dual is the cuboctahedron. The long face-diagonal length is exactly times the short face-diagonal length; thus, the acute angles on each face measure arccos(1/3), or approximately 70.53°.
Truncated tetrahedronIn geometry, the truncated tetrahedron is an Archimedean solid. It has 4 regular hexagonal faces, 4 equilateral triangle faces, 12 vertices and 18 edges (of two types). It can be constructed by truncating all 4 vertices of a regular tetrahedron at one third of the original edge length. A deeper truncation, removing a tetrahedron of half the original edge length from each vertex, is called rectification. The rectification of a tetrahedron produces an octahedron.
Uniform polyhedronIn geometry, a uniform polyhedron has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive (i.e., there is an isometry mapping any vertex onto any other). It follows that all vertices are congruent. Uniform polyhedra may be regular (if also face- and edge-transitive), quasi-regular (if also edge-transitive but not face-transitive), or semi-regular (if neither edge- nor face-transitive). The faces and vertices need not be convex, so many of the uniform polyhedra are also star polyhedra.
Kite (geometry)In Euclidean geometry, a kite is a quadrilateral with reflection symmetry across a diagonal. Because of this symmetry, a kite has two equal angles and two pairs of adjacent equal-length sides. Kites are also known as deltoids, but the word deltoid may also refer to a deltoid curve, an unrelated geometric object sometimes studied in connection with quadrilaterals. A kite may also be called a dart, particularly if it is not convex.
Conway polyhedron notationIn geometry, Conway polyhedron notation, invented by John Horton Conway and promoted by George W. Hart, is used to describe polyhedra based on a seed polyhedron modified by various prefix operations. Conway and Hart extended the idea of using operators, like truncation as defined by Kepler, to build related polyhedra of the same symmetry. For example, tC represents a truncated cube, and taC, parsed as t(aC), is (topologically) a truncated cuboctahedron. The simplest operator dual swaps vertex and face elements; e.
DiceDice (: die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance. A traditional die is a cube with each of its six faces marked with a different number of dots (pips) from one to six. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing a random integer from one to six on its upper surface, with each value being equally likely.
Semiregular polyhedronIn geometry, the term semiregular polyhedron (or semiregular polytope) is used variously by different authors. In its original definition, it is a polyhedron with regular polygonal faces, and a symmetry group which is transitive on its vertices; today, this is more commonly referred to as a uniform polyhedron (this follows from Thorold Gosset's 1900 definition of the more general semiregular polytope). These polyhedra include: The thirteen Archimedean solids.
Icosahedral symmetryIn mathematics, and especially in geometry, an object has icosahedral symmetry if it has the same symmetries as a regular icosahedron. Examples of other polyhedra with icosahedral symmetry include the regular dodecahedron (the dual of the icosahedron) and the rhombic triacontahedron. Every polyhedron with icosahedral symmetry has 60 rotational (or orientation-preserving) symmetries and 60 orientation-reversing symmetries (that combine a rotation and a reflection), for a total symmetry order of 120.
Vertex configurationIn geometry, a vertex configuration is a shorthand notation for representing the vertex figure of a polyhedron or tiling as the sequence of faces around a vertex. For uniform polyhedra there is only one vertex type and therefore the vertex configuration fully defines the polyhedron. (Chiral polyhedra exist in mirror-image pairs with the same vertex configuration.) A vertex configuration is given as a sequence of numbers representing the number of sides of the faces going around the vertex. The notation "a.
TrapezohedronIn geometry, an n-gonal trapezohedron, n-trapezohedron, n-antidipyramid, n-antibipyramid, or n-deltohedron is the dual polyhedron of an n-gonal antiprism. The 2n faces of an n-trapezohedron are congruent and symmetrically staggered; they are called twisted kites. With a higher symmetry, its 2n faces are kites (also called deltoids). The "n-gonal" part of the name does not refer to faces here, but to two arrangements of each n vertices around an axis of n-fold symmetry. The dual n-gonal antiprism has two actual n-gon faces.
BipyramidA (symmetric) n-gonal bipyramid or dipyramid is a polyhedron formed by joining an n-gonal pyramid and its base-to-base. An n-gonal bipyramid has 2n triangle faces, 3n edges, and 2 + n vertices. The "n-gonal" in the name of a bipyramid does not refer to a face but to the internal polygon base, lying in the mirror plane that connects the two pyramid halves. (If it were a face, then each of its edges would connect three faces instead of two.) A "regular" bipyramid has a regular polygon base.
Truncated octahedronIn geometry, the truncated octahedron is the Archimedean solid that arises from a regular octahedron by removing six pyramids, one at each of the octahedron's vertices. The truncated octahedron has 14 faces (8 regular hexagons and 6 squares), 36 edges, and 24 vertices. Since each of its faces has point symmetry the truncated octahedron is a 6-zonohedron. It is also the Goldberg polyhedron GIV(1,1), containing square and hexagonal faces. Like the cube, it can tessellate (or "pack") 3-dimensional space, as a permutohedron.
Isosceles triangleIn geometry, an isosceles triangle (aɪˈsɒsəliːz) is a triangle that has two sides of equal length. Sometimes it is specified as having exactly two sides of equal length, and sometimes as having at least two sides of equal length, the latter version thus including the equilateral triangle as a special case. Examples of isosceles triangles include the isosceles right triangle, the golden triangle, and the faces of bipyramids and certain Catalan solids.
RhombicuboctahedronIn geometry, the rhombicuboctahedron, or small rhombicuboctahedron, is a polyhedron with eight triangular, six square, and twelve rectangular faces. There are 24 identical vertices, with one triangle, one square, and two rectangles meeting at each one. If all the rectangles are themselves square (equivalently, all the edges are the same length, ensuring the triangles are equilateral), it is an Archimedean solid. The polyhedron has octahedral symmetry, like the cube and octahedron.
Quasiregular polyhedronIn geometry, a quasiregular polyhedron is a uniform polyhedron that has exactly two kinds of regular faces, which alternate around each vertex. They are vertex-transitive and edge-transitive, hence a step closer to regular polyhedra than the semiregular, which are merely vertex-transitive. Their dual figures are face-transitive and edge-transitive; they have exactly two kinds of regular vertex figures, which alternate around each face. They are sometimes also considered quasiregular.
Platonic solidIn geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex. There are only five such polyhedra: Geometers have studied the Platonic solids for thousands of years. They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who hypothesized in one of his dialogues, the Timaeus, that the classical elements were made of these regular solids.
ZonohedronIn geometry, a zonohedron is a convex polyhedron that is centrally symmetric, every face of which is a polygon that is centrally symmetric (a zonogon). Any zonohedron may equivalently be described as the Minkowski sum of a set of line segments in three-dimensional space, or as a three-dimensional projection of a hypercube. Zonohedra were originally defined and studied by E. S. Fedorov, a Russian crystallographer. More generally, in any dimension, the Minkowski sum of line segments forms a polytope known as a zonotope.
Truncated icosidodecahedronIn geometry, a truncated icosidodecahedron, rhombitruncated icosidodecahedron, great rhombicosidodecahedron, omnitruncated dodecahedron or omnitruncated icosahedron is an Archimedean solid, one of thirteen convex, isogonal, non-prismatic solids constructed by two or more types of regular polygon faces. It has 62 faces: 30 squares, 20 regular hexagons, and 12 regular decagons. It has the most edges and vertices of all Platonic and Archimedean solids, though the snub dodecahedron has more faces.