In geometry, a circumscribed sphere of a polyhedron is a sphere that contains the polyhedron and touches each of the polyhedron's vertices. [1] The word circumsphere is sometimes used to mean the same thing, by analogy with the term circumcircle . [2] As in the case of two-dimensional circumscribed circles (circumcircles), the radius of a sphere circumscribed around a polyhedron P is called the circumradius of P, [3] and the center point of this sphere is called the circumcenter of P. [4]
When it exists, a circumscribed sphere need not be the smallest sphere containing the polyhedron; for instance, the tetrahedron formed by a vertex of a cube and its three neighbors has the same circumsphere as the cube itself, but can be contained within a smaller sphere having the three neighboring vertices on its equator. However, the smallest sphere containing a given polyhedron is always the circumsphere of the convex hull of a subset of the vertices of the polyhedron. [5]
In De solidorum elementis (circa 1630), René Descartes observed that, for a polyhedron with a circumscribed sphere, all faces have circumscribed circles, the circles where the plane of the face meets the circumscribed sphere. Descartes suggested that this necessary condition for the existence of a circumscribed sphere is sufficient, but it is not true: some bipyramids, for instance, can have circumscribed circles for their faces (all of which are triangles) but still have no circumscribed sphere for the whole polyhedron. However, whenever a simple polyhedron has a circumscribed circle for each of its faces, it also has a circumscribed sphere. [6]
The circumscribed sphere is the three-dimensional analogue of the circumscribed circle. All regular polyhedra have circumscribed spheres, but most irregular polyhedra do not have one, since in general not all vertices lie on a common sphere. The circumscribed sphere (when it exists) is an example of a bounding sphere, a sphere that contains a given shape. It is possible to define the smallest bounding sphere for any polyhedron, and compute it in linear time. [5]
Other spheres defined for some but not all polyhedra include a midsphere, a sphere tangent to all edges of a polyhedron, and an inscribed sphere, a sphere tangent to all faces of a polyhedron. In the regular polyhedra, the inscribed sphere, midsphere, and circumscribed sphere all exist and are concentric. [7]
When the circumscribed sphere is the set of infinite limiting points of hyperbolic space, a polyhedron that it circumscribes is known as an ideal polyhedron.
There are five convex regular polyhedra, known as the Platonic solids. All Platonic solids have circumscribed spheres. For an arbitrary point on the circumscribed sphere of each Platonic solid with number of the vertices , if are the distances to the vertices , then [8]
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces. It has twelve edges and eight vertices. It can be represented as a rectangular cuboid with six square faces, or a parallelepiped with equal edges. It is an example of many type of solids: Platonic solid, regular polyhedron, parallelohedron, zonohedron, and plesiohedron. The dual polyhedron of a cube is the regular octahedron.
In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.
In geometry, the regular icosahedron is a convex polyhedron that can be constructed from pentagonal antiprism by attaching two pentagonal pyramids with regular faces to each of its pentagonal faces, or by putting points onto the cube. The resulting polyhedron has 20 equilateral triangles as its faces, 30 edges, and 12 vertices. It is an example of a Platonic solid and of a deltahedron. The icosahedral graph represents the skeleton of a regular icosahedron.
In geometry, an icosidodecahedron or pentagonal gyrobirotunda is a polyhedron with twenty (icosi) triangular faces and twelve (dodeca) pentagonal faces. An icosidodecahedron has 30 identical vertices, with two triangles and two pentagons meeting at each, and 60 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a pentagon. As such, it is one of the Archimedean solids and more particularly, a quasiregular polyhedron.
In geometry, an octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces. One special case is the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. Regular octahedra occur in nature as crystal structures. Many types of irregular octahedra also exist, including both convex and non-convex shapes.
In geometry, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional figure with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.
In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent regular polygons, and the same number of faces meet at each vertex. There are only five such polyhedra:
In geometry, a hexagon is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.
In mathematics, and more specifically in algebraic topology and polyhedral combinatorics, the Euler characteristic is a topological invariant, a number that describes a topological space's shape or structure regardless of the way it is bent. It is commonly denoted by .
A regular polyhedron is a polyhedron whose symmetry group acts transitively on its flags. A regular polyhedron is highly symmetrical, being all of edge-transitive, vertex-transitive and face-transitive. In classical contexts, many different equivalent definitions are used; a common one is that the faces are congruent regular polygons which are assembled in the same way around each vertex.
In Euclidean geometry, a regular polygon is a polygon that is direct equiangular and equilateral. 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, if the edge length is fixed.
In geometry, the (angular) defect means the failure of some angles to add up to the expected amount of 360° or 180°, when such angles in the Euclidean plane would. The opposite notion is the excess.
In geometry, the triakis icosahedron is an Archimedean dual solid, or a Catalan solid, with 60 isosceles triangle faces. Its dual is the truncated dodecahedron. It has also been called the kisicosahedron. It was first depicted, in a non-convex form with equilateral triangle faces, by Leonardo da Vinci in Luca Pacioli's Divina proportione, where it was named the icosahedron elevatum. The capsid of the Hepatitis A virus has the shape of a triakis icosahedron.
In geometry, the inscribed sphere or insphere of a convex polyhedron is a sphere that is contained within the polyhedron and tangent to each of the polyhedron's faces. It is the largest sphere that is contained wholly within the polyhedron, and is dual to the dual polyhedron's circumsphere.
In geometry, the midsphere or intersphere of a convex polyhedron is a sphere which is tangent to every edge of the polyhedron. Not every polyhedron has a midsphere, but the uniform polyhedra, including the regular, quasiregular and semiregular polyhedra and their duals all have midspheres. The radius of the midsphere is called the midradius. A polyhedron that has a midsphere is said to be midscribed about this sphere.
A regular dodecahedron or pentagonal dodecahedron is a dodecahedron composed of regular pentagonal faces, three meeting at each vertex. It is an example of Platonic solids, described as cosmic stellation by Plato in his dialogues, and it was used as part of Solar System proposed by Johannes Kepler. However, the regular dodecahedron, including the other Platonic solids, has already been described by other philosophers since antiquity.
In polyhedral combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, Steinitz's theorem is a characterization of the undirected graphs formed by the edges and vertices of three-dimensional convex polyhedra: they are exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. That is, every convex polyhedron forms a 3-connected planar graph, and every 3-connected planar graph can be represented as the graph of a convex polyhedron. For this reason, the 3-connected planar graphs are also known as polyhedral graphs.
In three-dimensional hyperbolic geometry, an ideal polyhedron is a convex polyhedron all of whose vertices are ideal points, points "at infinity" rather than interior to three-dimensional hyperbolic space. It can be defined as the convex hull of a finite set of ideal points. An ideal polyhedron has ideal polygons as its faces, meeting along lines of the hyperbolic space.
Descartes on Polyhedra: A Study of the "De solidorum elementis" is a book in the history of mathematics, concerning the work of René Descartes on polyhedra. Central to the book is the disputed priority for Euler's polyhedral formula between Leonhard Euler, who published an explicit version of the formula, and Descartes, whose De solidorum elementis includes a result from which the formula is easily derived.
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