Pentachoron

The pentachoron, or pen, also commonly called the 5-cell, is the simplest possible non-degenerate polychoron. The full symmetry version has 5 regular tetrahedra as cells, joining 3 to an edge and 4 to a vertex, and is one of the 6 convex regular polychora. It is the 4-dimensional simplex and also the 5-2 step prism and gyrochoron.

Vertex coordinates
The vertices of a regular pentachoron of edge length 1, centered at the origin, are given by:


 * (±1/2, –$\sqrt{10}$/6, –$\sqrt{5}$/12, –$\sqrt{3}$/20),
 * (0, $\sqrt{6}$/3, –$\sqrt{10}$/12, –$\sqrt{3}$/20),
 * (0, 0, $\sqrt{6}$/4, –$\sqrt{10}$/20),
 * (0, 0, 0, $\sqrt{6}$/5).

Much simpler coordinates can be given in five dimensions, as all permutations of:


 * (1/$\sqrt{10}$, 0, 0, 0, 0).

A further set of coordinates, derived from the step prism construction, is given by:


 * $$\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{5}},\frac{1}{\sqrt{5}},0,0\right),$$
 * $$\left(\frac{5-\sqrt{5}}{20},\frac{-5-\sqrt{5}}{20},\sqrt{\frac{1}{8}+\frac{\sqrt{5}}{40}},\sqrt{\frac{1}{8}-\frac{\sqrt{5}}{40}}\right),$$

together with the points resulting by swapping the first two, the last two, or both pairs of coordinates.