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.
Johnson solidIn geometry, a Johnson solid is a strictly convex polyhedron each face of which is a regular polygon. There is no requirement that each face must be the same polygon, or that the same polygons join around each vertex. An example of a Johnson solid is the square-based pyramid with equilateral sides (J_1); it has 1 square face and 4 triangular faces. Some authors require that the solid not be uniform (i.e., not Platonic solid, Archimedean solid, uniform prism, or uniform antiprism) before they refer to it as a "Johnson solid".
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.
Catalan solidIn mathematics, a Catalan solid, or Archimedean dual, is a polyhedron that is dual to an Archimedean solid. There are 13 Catalan solids. They are named for the Belgian mathematician Eugène Catalan, who first described them in 1865. The Catalan solids are all convex. They are face-transitive but not vertex-transitive. This is because the dual Archimedean solids are vertex-transitive and not face-transitive. Note that unlike Platonic solids and Archimedean solids, the faces of Catalan solids are not regular polygons.
Archimedean solidIn geometry, an Archimedean solid is one of the 13 solids first enumerated by Archimedes. They are the convex uniform polyhedra composed of regular polygons meeting in identical vertices, excluding the five Platonic solids (which are composed of only one type of polygon), excluding the prisms and antiprisms, and excluding the pseudorhombicuboctahedron. They are a subset of the Johnson solids, whose regular polygonal faces do not need to meet in identical vertices.
GeometryGeometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.
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.
Regular polygonIn Euclidean geometry, a regular polygon is a polygon that is direct equiangular (all angles are equal in measure) and equilateral (all sides have the same length). Regular polygons may be either convex, star or skew. In the limit, a sequence of regular polygons with an increasing number of sides approximates a circle, if the perimeter or area is fixed, or a regular apeirogon (effectively a straight line), if the edge length is fixed. These properties apply to all regular polygons, whether convex or star.
Regular skew polyhedronIn geometry, the regular skew polyhedra are generalizations to the set of regular polyhedra which include the possibility of nonplanar faces or vertex figures. Coxeter looked at skew vertex figures which created new 4-dimensional regular polyhedra, and much later Branko Grünbaum looked at regular skew faces. Infinite regular skew polyhedra that span 3-space or higher are called regular skew apeirohedra. According to Coxeter, in 1926 John Flinders Petrie generalized the concept of regular skew polygons (nonplanar polygons) to regular skew polyhedra.
TessellationA tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries. A periodic tiling has a repeating pattern. Some special kinds include regular tilings with regular polygonal tiles all of the same shape, and semiregular tilings with regular tiles of more than one shape and with every corner identically arranged.
Regular 4-polytopeIn mathematics, a regular 4-polytope is a regular four-dimensional polytope. They are the four-dimensional analogues of the regular polyhedra in three dimensions and the regular polygons in two dimensions. There are six convex and ten star regular 4-polytopes, giving a total of sixteen. The convex regular 4-polytopes were first described by the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli in the mid-19th century. He discovered that there are precisely six such figures.
Differential geometryDifferential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky.
Platonic hydrocarbonIn organic chemistry, a Platonic hydrocarbon is a hydrocarbon (molecule) whose structure matches one of the five Platonic solids, with carbon atoms replacing its vertices, carbon–carbon bonds replacing its edges, and hydrogen atoms as needed. Not all Platonic solids have molecular hydrocarbon counterparts; those that do are the tetrahedron (tetrahedrane), the cube (cubane), and the dodecahedron (dodecahedrane). Tetrahedrane Tetrahedrane (C4H4) is a hypothetical compound.
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.
Euclidean geometryEuclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, which he described in his textbook on geometry, Elements. Euclid's approach consists in assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms (postulates) and deducing many other propositions (theorems) from these. Although many of Euclid's results had been stated earlier, Euclid was the first to organize these propositions into a logical system in which each result is proved from axioms and previously proved theorems.
AstronomyAstronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroid, asteroid, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Regular polytopeIn mathematics, a regular polytope is a polytope whose symmetry group acts transitively on its flags, thus giving it the highest degree of symmetry. All its elements or j-faces (for all 0 ≤ j ≤ n, where n is the dimension of the polytope) — cells, faces and so on — are also transitive on the symmetries of the polytope, and are regular polytopes of dimension ≤ n. Regular polytopes are the generalized analog in any number of dimensions of regular polygons (for example, the square or the regular pentagon) and regular polyhedra (for example, the cube).
Regular Polytopes (book)Regular Polytopes is a geometry book on regular polytopes written by Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter. It was originally published by Methuen in 1947 and by Pitman Publishing in 1948, with a second edition published by Macmillan in 1963 and a third edition by Dover Publications in 1973. The Basic Library List Committee of the Mathematical Association of America has recommended that it be included in undergraduate mathematics libraries. The main topics of the book are the Platonic solids (regular convex polyhedra), related polyhedra, and their higher-dimensional generalizations.
Non-Euclidean geometryIn mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean geometry arises by either replacing the parallel postulate with an alternative, or relaxing the metric requirement. In the former case, one obtains hyperbolic geometry and elliptic geometry, the traditional non-Euclidean geometries.
Elliptic geometryElliptic geometry is an example of a geometry in which Euclid's parallel postulate does not hold. Instead, as in spherical geometry, there are no parallel lines since any two lines must intersect. However, unlike in spherical geometry, two lines are usually assumed to intersect at a single point (rather than two). Because of this, the elliptic geometry described in this article is sometimes referred to as single elliptic geometry whereas spherical geometry is sometimes referred to as double elliptic geometry.
