Bipyramid

A (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. It is usually implied to be also a right bipyramid. A right bipyramid has its two apices right above and right below the center or the centroid of its polygon base. A "regular" right (symmetric) n-gonal bipyramid has Schläfli symbol { } + {n}. A right (symmetric) bipyramid has Schläfli symbol { } + P, for polygon base P. The "regular" right (thus face-transitive) n-gonal bipyramid with regular vertices is the dual of the n-gonal uniform (thus right) prism, and has congruent isosceles triangle faces. A "regular" right (symmetric) n-gonal bipyramid can be projected on a sphere or globe as a "regular" right (symmetric) n-gonal spherical bipyramid: n equally spaced lines of longitude going from pole to pole, and an equator line bisecting them. Only three kinds of bipyramids can have all edges of the same length (which implies that all faces are equilateral triangles, and thus the bipyramid is a deltahedron): the "regular" right (symmetric) triangular, tetragonal, and pentagonal bipyramids. The tetragonal or square bipyramid with same length edges, or regular octahedron, counts among the Platonic solids; the triangular and pentagonal bipyramids with same length edges count among the Johnson solids (J12 and J13). A "regular" right (symmetric) n-gonal bipyramid has dihedral symmetry group Dnh, of order 4n, except in the case of a regular octahedron, which has the larger octahedral symmetry group Oh, of order 48, which has three versions of D4h as subgroups.