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 polyhedral compound is a figure that is composed of several polyhedra sharing a common centre. They are the three-dimensional analogs of polygonal compounds such as the hexagram.
In chemistry, octahedral molecular geometry, also called square bipyramidal, describes the shape of compounds with six atoms or groups of atoms or ligands symmetrically arranged around a central atom, defining the vertices of an octahedron. The octahedron has eight faces, hence the prefix octa. The octahedron is one of the Platonic solids, although octahedral molecules typically have an atom in their centre and no bonds between the ligand atoms. A perfect octahedron belongs to the point group Oh. Examples of octahedral compounds are sulfur hexafluoride SF6 and molybdenum hexacarbonyl Mo(CO)6. The term "octahedral" is used somewhat loosely by chemists, focusing on the geometry of the bonds to the central atom and not considering differences among the ligands themselves. For example, [Co(NH3)6]3+, which is not octahedral in the mathematical sense due to the orientation of the N−H bonds, is referred to as octahedral.
In mathematics, and especially in geometry, an object has icosahedral symmetry if it has the same symmetries as a regular icosahedron. Examples of other polyhedra with icosahedral symmetry include the regular dodecahedron and the rhombic triacontahedron.
The cubic honeycomb or cubic cellulation is the only proper regular space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space made up of cubic cells. It has 4 cubes around every edge, and 8 cubes around each vertex. Its vertex figure is a regular octahedron. It is a self-dual tessellation with Schläfli symbol {4,3,4}. John Horton Conway called this honeycomb a cubille.
The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb is a quasiregular space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of alternating regular octahedra and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:2.
The compound of five cubes is one of the five regular polyhedral compounds. It was first described by Edmund Hess in 1876.
The compound of twenty octahedra is a uniform polyhedron compound. It's composed of a symmetric arrangement of 20 octahedra. It is a special case of the compound of 20 octahedra with rotational freedom, in which pairs of octahedral vertices coincide.
The compound of five truncated tetrahedra is a uniform polyhedron compound. It's composed of 5 truncated tetrahedra rotated around a common axis. It may be formed by truncating each of the tetrahedra in the compound of five tetrahedra. A far-enough truncation creates the compound of five octahedra. Its convex hull is a nonuniform snub dodecahedron.
This uniform polyhedron compound is a composition of 10 truncated tetrahedra, formed by truncating each of the tetrahedra in the compound of 10 tetrahedra. It also results from composing the two enantiomers of the compound of 5 truncated tetrahedra.
This uniform polyhedron compound is a composition of 5 truncated cubes, formed by truncating each of the cubes in the compound of 5 cubes.
The compound of six tetrahedra is a uniform polyhedron compound. It's composed of a symmetric arrangement of 6 tetrahedra. It can be constructed by inscribing a stella octangula within each cube in the compound of three cubes, or by stellating each octahedron in the compound of three octahedra.
The compound of four octahedra is a uniform polyhedron compound. It's composed of a symmetric arrangement of 4 octahedra, considered as triangular antiprisms. It can be constructed by superimposing four identical octahedra, and then rotating each by 60 degrees about a separate axis.
The compound of eight octahedra with rotational freedom is a uniform polyhedron compound. It is composed of a symmetric arrangement of 8 octahedra, considered as triangular antiprisms. It can be constructed by superimposing eight identical octahedra, and then rotating them in pairs about the four axes that pass through the centres of two opposite octahedral faces. Each octahedron is rotated by an equal angle θ.
The compound of four octahedra with rotational freedom is a uniform polyhedron compound. It consists in a symmetric arrangement of 4 octahedra, considered as triangular antiprisms. It can be constructed by superimposing four identical octahedra, and then rotating each by an equal angle θ about a separate axis passing through the centres of two opposite octahedral faces, in such a way as to preserve pyritohedral symmetry.
The compound of twenty octahedra with rotational freedom is a uniform polyhedron compound. It's composed of a symmetric arrangement of 20 octahedra, considered as triangular antiprisms. It can be constructed by superimposing two copies of the compound of 10 octahedra UC16, and for each resulting pair of octahedra, rotating each octahedron in the pair by an equal and opposite angle θ.
This uniform polyhedron compound is a symmetric arrangement of 12 pentagonal antiprisms. It can be constructed by inscribing one pair of pentagonal antiprisms within an icosahedron, in each of the six possible ways, and then rotating each by an equal and opposite angle θ.
In mathematics, the compound of three octahedra or octahedron 3-compound is a polyhedral compound formed from three regular octahedra, all sharing a common center but rotated with respect to each other. Although appearing earlier in the mathematical literature, it was rediscovered and popularized by M. C. Escher, who used it in the central image of his 1948 woodcut Stars.
The compound of four cubes or Bakos compound is a face-transitive polyhedron compound of four cubes with octahedral symmetry. It is the dual of the compound of four octahedra. Its surface area is 687/77 square lengths of the edge.
