TetrahedronIn geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the ordinary convex polyhedra. The tetrahedron is the three-dimensional case of the more general concept of a Euclidean simplex, and may thus also be called a 3-simplex. The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point.
PolyhedronIn geometry, a polyhedron (: polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. A convex polyhedron is a polyhedron that bounds a convex set. Every convex polyhedron can be constructed as the convex hull of its vertices, and for every finite set of points, not all on the same plane, the convex hull is a convex polyhedron. Cubes and pyramids are examples of convex polyhedra. A polyhedron is a 3-dimensional example of a polytope, a more general concept in any number of dimensions.
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.
CubeIn geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross. The cube is the only regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It has 6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 vertices. The cube is also a square parallelepiped, an equilateral cuboid and a right rhombohedron a 3-zonohedron. It is a regular square prism in three orientations, and a trigonal trapezohedron in four orientations.
Dual polyhedronIn geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron. Duality preserves the symmetries of a polyhedron.
CuboctahedronA cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. As such, it is a quasiregular polyhedron, i.e. an Archimedean solid that is not only vertex-transitive but also edge-transitive. It is radially equilateral. Its dual polyhedron is the rhombic dodecahedron.
IcosidodecahedronIn geometry, an icosidodecahedron is a polyhedron with twenty (icosi) triangular faces and twelve (dodeca) pentagonal faces. An icosidodecahedron has 30 identical vertices, with two triangles and two pentagons meeting at each, and 60 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a pentagon. As such it is one of the Archimedean solids and more particularly, a quasiregular polyhedron. An icosidodecahedron has icosahedral symmetry, and its first stellation is the compound of a dodecahedron and its dual icosahedron, with the vertices of the icosidodecahedron located at the midpoints of the edges of either.
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.
IcosahedronIn geometry, an icosahedron (ˌaɪkɒsəˈhiːdrən,-kə-,-koʊ- or aɪˌkɒsəˈhiːdrən) is a polyhedron with 20 faces. The name comes . The plural can be either "icosahedra" (-drə) or "icosahedrons". There are infinitely many non-similar shapes of icosahedra, some of them being more symmetrical than others. The best known is the (convex, non-stellated) regular icosahedron—one of the Platonic solids—whose faces are 20 equilateral triangles. There are two objects, one convex and one nonconvex, that can both be called regular icosahedra.
Schläfli symbolIn geometry, the Schläfli symbol is a notation of the form that defines regular polytopes and tessellations. The Schläfli symbol is named after the 19th-century Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli, who generalized Euclidean geometry to more than three dimensions and discovered all their convex regular polytopes, including the six that occur in four dimensions. The Schläfli symbol is a recursive description, starting with {p} for a p-sided regular polygon that is convex.
