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.
Star polyhedronIn geometry, a star polyhedron is a polyhedron which has some repetitive quality of nonconvexity giving it a star-like visual quality. There are two general kinds of star polyhedron: Polyhedra which self-intersect in a repetitive way. Concave polyhedra of a particular kind which alternate convex and concave or saddle vertices in a repetitive way. Mathematically these figures are examples of star domains. Mathematical studies of star polyhedra are usually concerned with regular, uniform polyhedra, or the duals of the uniform polyhedra.
Convex polytopeA convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set contained in the -dimensional Euclidean space . Most texts use the term "polytope" for a bounded convex polytope, and the word "polyhedron" for the more general, possibly unbounded object. Others (including this article) allow polytopes to be unbounded. The terms "bounded/unbounded convex polytope" will be used below whenever the boundedness is critical to the discussed issue.
List of uniform polyhedraIn geometry, a uniform polyhedron is a polyhedron which has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive (transitive on its vertices, isogonal, i.e. there is an isometry mapping any vertex onto any other). It follows that all vertices are congruent, and the polyhedron has a high degree of reflectional and rotational symmetry. Uniform polyhedra can be divided between convex forms with convex regular polygon faces and star forms. Star forms have either regular star polygon faces or vertex figures or both.
HexahedronA hexahedron (plural: hexahedra or hexahedrons) or sexahedron (plural: sexahedra or sexahedrons) is any polyhedron with six faces. A cube, for example, is a regular hexahedron with all its faces square, and three squares around each vertex. There are seven topologically distinct convex hexahedra, one of which exists in two mirror image forms. There are three topologically distinct concave hexahedra.
Schönhardt polyhedronIn geometry, the Schönhardt polyhedron is the simplest non-convex polyhedron that cannot be triangulated into tetrahedra without adding new vertices. It is named after German mathematician Erich Schönhardt, who described it in 1928. The same polyhedra have also been studied in connection with Cauchy's rigidity theorem as an example where polyhedra with two different shapes have faces of the same shapes. One way of constructing the Schönhardt polyhedron starts with a triangular prism, with two parallel equilateral triangles as its faces.
Honeycomb (geometry)In geometry, a honeycomb is a space filling or close packing of polyhedral or higher-dimensional cells, so that there are no gaps. It is an example of the more general mathematical tiling or tessellation in any number of dimensions. Its dimension can be clarified as n-honeycomb for a honeycomb of n-dimensional space. Honeycombs are usually constructed in ordinary Euclidean ("flat") space. They may also be constructed in non-Euclidean spaces, such as hyperbolic honeycombs.
Uniform star polyhedronIn geometry, a uniform star polyhedron is a self-intersecting uniform polyhedron. They are also sometimes called nonconvex polyhedra to imply self-intersecting. Each polyhedron can contain either star polygon faces, star polygon vertex figures, or both. The complete set of 57 nonprismatic uniform star polyhedra includes the 4 regular ones, called the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra, 5 quasiregular ones, and 48 semiregular ones. There are also two infinite sets of uniform star prisms and uniform star antiprisms.
Isotoxal figureIn geometry, a polytope (for example, a polygon or a polyhedron) or a tiling is isotoxal () or edge-transitive if its symmetries act transitively on its edges. Informally, this means that there is only one type of edge to the object: given two edges, there is a translation, rotation, and/or reflection that will move one edge to the other while leaving the region occupied by the object unchanged. An isotoxal polygon is an even-sided i.e. equilateral polygon, but not all equilateral polygons are isotoxal.
Configuration (polytope)In geometry, H. S. M. Coxeter called a regular polytope a special kind of configuration. Other configurations in geometry are something different. These polytope configurations may be more accurately called incidence matrices, where like elements are collected together in rows and columns. Regular polytopes will have one row and column per k-face element, while other polytopes will have one row and column for each k-face type by their symmetry classes.
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.
Complex polytopeIn geometry, a complex polytope is a generalization of a polytope in real space to an analogous structure in a complex Hilbert space, where each real dimension is accompanied by an imaginary one. A complex polytope may be understood as a collection of complex points, lines, planes, and so on, where every point is the junction of multiple lines, every line of multiple planes, and so on. Precise definitions exist only for the regular complex polytopes, which are configurations.
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.
