Hexagonal prism

Hexagon prism
Type	prism, parallelohedron
Symmetry group	prismatic symmetry ${\displaystyle D_{6\mathrm {h} }}$ of order 24
Dual polyhedron	hexagonal bipyramid

3D model of a uniform hexagonal prism.

In geometry, the hexagonal prism is a prism with hexagonal base. Prisms are polyhedrons; this polyhedron has 8 faces, 18 edges, and 12 vertices. ^[1]

As a semiregular polyhedron

If faces are all regular, the hexagonal prism is a semiregular polyhedron —more generally, a uniform polyhedron —and the fourth in an infinite set of prisms formed by square sides and two regular polygon caps. It can be seen as a truncated hexagonal hosohedron , represented by Schläfli symbol t{2,6}. Alternately it can be seen as the Cartesian product of a regular hexagon and a line segment, and represented by the product {6}×{}. The dual of a hexagonal prism is a hexagonal bipyramid.

The symmetry group of a right hexagonal prism is prismatic symmetry ${\displaystyle D_{6\mathrm {h} }}$ of order 24, consisting of rotation around an axis passing through the regular hexagon bases' center, and reflection across a horizontal plane. ^[2]

As in most prisms, the volume is found by taking the area of the base, with a side length of ${\displaystyle a}$, and multiplying it by the height ${\displaystyle h}$, giving the formula: ^[3] $${\displaystyle V={\frac {3{\sqrt {3}}}{2}}a^{2}h,}$$ and its surface area is by summing the area of two regular hexagonal bases and the lateral faces of six squares: $${\displaystyle S=3a({\sqrt {3}}a+2h).}$$

As a parallelohedron

Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb

The hexagonal prism is one of the parallelohedron, a polyhedral class that can be translated without rotations in Euclidean space, producing honeycombs; this class was discovered by Evgraf Fedorov in accordance with his studies of crystallography systems. The hexagonal prism is generated from four line segments, three of them parallel to a common plane and the fourth not. ^[4] Its most symmetric form is the right prism over a regular hexagon, forming the hexagonal prismatic honeycomb. ^[5]

The hexagonal prism also exists as cells of four prismatic uniform convex honeycombs in 3 dimensions:

Triangular-hexagonal prismatic honeycomb	Snub triangular-hexagonal prismatic honeycomb	Rhombitriangular-hexagonal prismatic honeycomb

It also exists as cells of a number of four-dimensional uniform 4-polytopes, including:

truncated tetrahedral prism	truncated octahedral prism	Truncated cuboctahedral prism	Truncated icosahedral prism	Truncated icosidodecahedral prism
runcitruncated 5-cell	omnitruncated 5-cell	runcitruncated 16-cell	omnitruncated tesseract
runcitruncated 24-cell	omnitruncated 24-cell	runcitruncated 600-cell	omnitruncated 120-cell

References

1. Pugh, Anthony (1976), Polyhedra: A Visual Approach, University of California Press, pp. 21, 27, 62, ISBN   9780520030565 .
2. Flusser, J.; Suk, T.; Zitofa, B. (2017), 2D and 3D Image Analysis by Moments, John Wiley & Sons, p. 126, ISBN   978-1-119-03935-8
3. Wheater, Carolyn C. (2007), Geometry, Career Press, pp. 236–237, ISBN   9781564149367
4. Alexandrov, A. D. (2005), "8.1 Parallelohedra", Convex Polyhedra, Springer, pp. 349–359
5. Delaney, Gary W.; Khoury, David (February 2013), "Onset of rigidity in 3D stretched string networks", The European Physical Journal B, 86 (2): 44, Bibcode:2013EPJB...86...44D, doi:10.1140/epjb/e2012-30445-y

External links

• Uniform Honeycombs in 3-Space VRML models
• The Uniform Polyhedra
• Virtual Reality Polyhedra The Encyclopedia of Polyhedra Prisms and antiprisms
• Weisstein, Eric W. "Hexagonal prism". MathWorld .
• Hexagonal Prism Interactive Model -- works in your web browser