Icosahedron
Icosahedron | |
---|---|
Rank | 3 |
Type | Regular |
Notation | |
Bowers style acronym | Ike |
Coxeter diagram | o5o3x () |
Schläfli symbol | {3,5} |
Conway notation | I |
Stewart notation | I5 |
Elements | |
Faces | 20 triangles |
Edges | 30 |
Vertices | 12 |
Vertex figure | Pentagon, edge length 1 |
Petrie polygons | 6 skew decagons |
Holes | 12 pentagons |
Measures (edge length 1) | |
Circumradius | |
Edge radius | |
Inradius | |
Volume | |
Dihedral angle | |
Central density | 1 |
Number of external pieces | 20 |
Level of complexity | 1 |
Related polytopes | |
Army | Ike |
Regiment | Ike |
Dual | Dodecahedron |
Petrie dual | Petrial icosahedron |
φ 2 | Great dodecahedron |
κ ? | Petrial small stellated dodecahedron |
Conjugate | Great icosahedron |
Abstract & topological properties | |
Flag count | 120 |
Euler characteristic | 2 |
Surface | Sphere |
Orientable | Yes |
Genus | 0 |
Skeleton | Icosahedral graph |
Properties | |
Symmetry | H3, order 120 |
Flag orbits | 1 |
Convex | Yes |
Net count | 43380 |
Nature | Tame |
The icosahedron, or ike, is one of the five Platonic solids. It has 20 triangles as faces, joining 5 to a vertex.
An alternate, lower symmetry construction as a snub tetrahedron, furthermore relates the icosahedron to the snub polytopes, most notably to the snub disicositetrachoron, of which it is a cell.
It is the only Platonic solid that does not appear as a cell in one of the convex regular polychora, because its dihedral angle is more than 120° and thus 3 icosahedra cannot fit around an edge in 4D. It does, however, appear as the vertex figure of the hexacosichoron, and as the cell of the non-convex faceted hexacosichoron.
Vertex coordinates[edit | edit source]
The vertices of an icosahedron of edge length 1, centered at the origin, are all cyclic permutations of:
- .
Representations[edit | edit source]
A regular icosahedron can be represented by the following Coxeter diagrams:
- o5o3x () (regular)
- o4s3s () (B3/2 symmetry, alternated truncated octahedron)
- s3s3s () (A3+, snub tetrahedron)
- oxoo5ooxo&#xt (H2 axial, seen as gyroelongated pentagonal bipyramid)
- xofo3ofox&#xt (A2 axial, face-first)
- xofox ofxfo&#xt (A1×A1 axial, edge-first)
- fxo ofx xof&#zx (A1×A1×A1 subsymmetry)
Related polytopes[edit | edit source]
The icosahedron is the colonel of a two-member regiment that also includes the great dodecahedron.
Alternate realizations[edit | edit source]
The great icosahedron is the icosahedron's conjugate. Thus they are both faithful symmetric realizations of the same abstract regular polytope, {3,5}. There are in total 6 faithful symmetric realizations of the underlying abstract polytope. The icosahedron and the great icosahedron are the only pure faithfully symmetric realizations, the others are the results of blending those two along with the hemiicosahedron.
Dimension | Components | Name |
---|---|---|
3 | Icosahedron | Icosahedron |
3 | Great icosahedron | Great icosahedron |
6 | Skew icosahedron | |
8 | ||
8 | ||
11 |
There are also realizations that are faithful but not symmetric. The particular case of 3-dimensional realizations with regular faces are called isomorphs. They have been investigated by Jim McNeill[1] and others. For example, one of the pyramids of the icosahedron can be inverted, producing an irregular polyhedron that is concave but with no intersections.
Stellations[edit | edit source]
The icosahedron has many stellations, not all of which are true polyhedra. They include the small triambic icosahedron, medial triambic icosahedron, great triambic icosahedron, great icosahedron, chiricosahedron, icosicosahedron, small icosicosahedron, ditrigonal icosahedron and the final stellation of the icosahedron.
Johnson solids[edit | edit source]
The icosahedron is related to many Johnson solids. Most obviously, it can be constructed by joining two pentagonal pyramids to a pentagonal antiprism. This means the icosahedron could also be called a gyroelongated pentagonal bipyramid. Joining a single pentagonal pyramid, or diminishing one vertex from the icosahedron, yields the gyroelongated pentagonal pyramid, and replacing the antiprism by a pentagonal prism yields the elongated pentagonal pyramid and the elongated pentagonal bipyramid. Cutting off two pyramids from two non-parallel, non-adjacent vertices yields the metabidiminished icosahedron, and cutting off a further non-adjacent pyramid yields the tridiminished icosahedron.
A much less obvious connection is with the hebesphenomegacorona, which may be derived from the icosahedron by expanding a single edge into a square, thus turning the two adjacent faces into squares as well. Similarly, if we take two opposite edges of the icosahedron and "stretch" them into squares via a partial Stott expansion, we obtain the bilunabirotunda.
Compounds[edit | edit source]
Two uniform polyhedron compounds are composed of icosahedra, both using it in pyritohedral symmetry:
Variations[edit | edit source]
An icosahedron has several variations as a snub polyhedron:
- Pyritohedral icosahedron - formed by alternating a truncated octahedron, has pyritohedral symmetry
- Snub tetrahedron - formed by alternating a great rhombitetratetrahedron, has chiral tetrahedral symmetry
The icosahedron can be considered to be a snub triangular antiprism, by analogy with the snub disphenoid and snub square antiprism. This can be seen since the icosahedron can be constructed from the octahedron, that is a triangular antiprism, but cutting it into two halves and inserting a set of 12 triangles between the halves.
In vertex figures[edit | edit source]
Name | Picture | Schläfli symbol | Edge length |
---|---|---|---|
Great stellated hecatonicosachoron | {5/2,3,5} | ||
Hexacosichoron | {3,3,5} | ||
Order-5 cubic honeycomb | {4,3,5} | ||
Order-5 dodecahedral honeycomb | {5,3,5} | ||
Order-5 hexagonal tiling honeycomb | {6,3,5} |
External links[edit | edit source]
- Bowers, Jonathan. "Polyhedron Category 1: Regulars" (#5).
- Bowers, Jonathan. "Batch 2: Ike and Sissid Facetings" (#1 under ike).
- Klitzing, Richard. "Ike".
- Quickfur. "The Icosahedron".
- Nan Ma. "Icosahedron {3, 5}".
- McCooey, David. "Icosahedron"
- Hi.gher.Space Wiki Contributors. "Icosahedron".
- Wikipedia contributors. "Regular icosahedron".
- Hartley, Michael. "{3,5}*120".
- Wedd, N. The icosahedron
- ↑ Jim McNeill. Isomorphs of the icosahedron