Hexahedron

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A hexahedron (pl.: hexahedra or hexahedrons) or sexahedron (pl.: 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.

Contents

There are seven topologically distinct convex hexahedra, [1] one of which exists in two mirror image forms. Additional non-convex hexahedra exist, with their number depending on how polyhedra are defined. Two polyhedra are "topologically distinct" if they have intrinsically different arrangements of faces and vertices, such that it is impossible to distort one into the other simply by changing the lengths of edges or the angles between edges or faces.

Convex, Cuboid

A hexahedron that is combinatorially equivalent to a cube may be called a cuboid, although this term is often used more specifically to mean a rectangular cuboid, a hexahedron with six rectangular sides. Different types of cuboids include the ones depicted and linked below.

Cuboids
Hexahedron.png Cuboid no label.svg Trigonal trapezohedron.png Trigonal trapezohedron gyro-side.png Usech kvadrat piramid.png Parallelepiped 2013-11-29.svg Rhombohedron.svg
Cube
(square)
Rectangular cuboid
(three pairs of
rectangles)
Trigonal trapezohedron
(congruent rhombi)
Trigonal trapezohedron
(congruent quadrilaterals)
Quadrilateral frustum
(apex-truncated
square pyramid)
Parallelepiped
(three pairs of
parallelograms)
Rhombohedron
(three pairs of
rhombi)

Convex, others

There are seven topologically distinct convex hexahedra, [1] the cuboid and six others, which are depicted below. One of these is chiral, in the sense that it cannot be deformed into its mirror image.

Image Hexahedron5.svg Hexahedron7.svg Hexahedron7a.svg Hexahedron2.svg Hexahedron6.svg Hexahedron3.svg Hexahedron4.svg
Name Triangular bipyramid Pentagonal pyramid Doubly truncated tetrahedron [2]
Features
  • 5 vertices
  • 9 edges
  • 6 triangles
  • 6 vertices
  • 10 edges
  • 4 triangles
  • 2 quadrilaterals
  • 6 vertices
  • 10 edges
  • 5 triangles
  • 1 pentagon
  • 7 vertices
  • 11 edges
  • 2 triangles
  • 4 quadrilaterals
  • 7 vertices
  • 11 edges
  • 3 triangles
  • 2 quadrilaterals
  • 1 pentagon
  • 8 vertices
  • 12 edges
  • 2 triangles
  • 2 quadrilaterals
  • 2 pentagons
Properties Simplicial Dome

Concave

Three further topologically distinct hexahedra can only be realised as concave acoptic polyhedra. These are defined as the surfaces formed by non-crossing simple polygon faces, with each edge shared by exactly two faces and each vertex surrounded by a cycle of three or more faces. [3]

Concave
Hexahedron8.svg Hexahedron10.svg Hexahedron9.svg
4.4.3.3.3.3 Faces
10 E, 6 V
5.5.3.3.3.3 Faces
11 E, 7 V
6.6.3.3.3.3 Faces
12 E, 8 V

These cannot be convex because they do not meet the conditions of Steinitz's theorem, which states that convex polyhedra have vertices and edges that form 3-vertex-connected graphs. [4] For other types of polyhedra that allow faces that are not simple polygons, such as the spherical polyhedra of Hong and Nagamochi, more possibilities exist. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cube</span> Solid object with six equal square faces

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dual polyhedron</span> Polyhedron associated with another by swapping vertices for faces

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, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polyhedron</span> 3D shape with flat faces, straight edges and sharp corners

In geometry, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional figure with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.

In geometry, a cuboid is a quadrilateral-faced convex hexahedron, a polyhedron with six faces.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vertex figure</span> Shape made by slicing off a corner of a polytope

In geometry, a vertex figure, broadly speaking, is the figure exposed when a corner of a polyhedron or polytope is sliced off.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uniform polyhedron</span> Isogonal polyhedron with regular faces

In geometry, a uniform polyhedron has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive—there is an isometry mapping any vertex onto any other. It follows that all vertices are congruent. Uniform polyhedra may be regular, quasi-regular, or semi-regular. The faces and vertices don't need to be convex, so many of the uniform polyhedra are also star polyhedra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geometric graph theory</span> Subfield of graph theory

Geometric graph theory in the broader sense is a large and amorphous subfield of graph theory, concerned with graphs defined by geometric means. In a stricter sense, geometric graph theory studies combinatorial and geometric properties of geometric graphs, meaning graphs drawn in the Euclidean plane with possibly intersecting straight-line edges, and topological graphs, where the edges are allowed to be arbitrary continuous curves connecting the vertices; thus, it can be described as "the theory of geometric and topological graphs". Geometric graphs are also known as spatial networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midsphere</span> Sphere tangent to every edge of a polyhedron

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honeycomb (geometry)</span> Tiling of euclidean or hyperbolic space of three or more dimensions

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vertex (geometry)</span> Point where two or more curves, lines, or edges meet

In geometry, a vertex is a point where two or more curves, lines, or edges meet or intersect. As a consequence of this definition, the point where two lines meet to form an angle and the corners of polygons and polyhedra are vertices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edge (geometry)</span> Line segment joining two adjacent vertices in a polygon or polytope

In geometry, an edge is a particular type of line segment joining two vertices in a polygon, polyhedron, or higher-dimensional polytope. In a polygon, an edge is a line segment on the boundary, and is often called a polygon side. In a polyhedron or more generally a polytope, an edge is a line segment where two faces meet. A segment joining two vertices while passing through the interior or exterior is not an edge but instead is called a diagonal.

Polyhedral combinatorics is a branch of mathematics, within combinatorics and discrete geometry, that studies the problems of counting and describing the faces of convex polyhedra and higher-dimensional convex polytopes.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polyhedral graph</span> Graph made from vertices and edges of a convex polyhedron

In geometric graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a polyhedral graph is the undirected graph formed from the vertices and edges of a convex polyhedron. Alternatively, in purely graph-theoretic terms, the polyhedral graphs are the 3-vertex-connected, planar graphs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toroidal polyhedron</span> Partition of a toroidal surface into polygons

In geometry, a toroidal polyhedron is a polyhedron which is also a toroid, having a topological genus of 1 or greater. Notable examples include the Császár and Szilassi polyhedra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ideal polyhedron</span> Shape in hyperbolic geometry

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.

References

  1. 1 2 Dillencourt, Michael B. (1996), "Polyhedra of small order and their Hamiltonian properties", Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B , 66 (1): 87–122, doi:10.1006/jctb.1996.0008, MR   1368518
  2. Kolpakov, Alexander; Murakami, Jun (2013), "Volume of a doubly truncated hyperbolic tetrahedron", Aequationes Mathematicae, 85 (3): 449–463, doi:10.1007/s00010-012-0153-y, MR   3063880
  3. Grünbaum, Branko (1999), "Acoptic polyhedra" (PDF), Advances in discrete and computational geometry (South Hadley, MA, 1996), Contemporary Mathematics, vol. 223, Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society, pp. 163–199, doi:10.1090/conm/223/03137, ISBN   978-0-8218-0674-6, MR   1661382 ; for the three non-convex acoptic hexahedra see p. 7 of the preprint version and Fig. 3, p. 30
  4. Ziegler, Günter M. (1995), "Chapter 4: Steinitz' Theorem for 3-Polytopes", Lectures on Polytopes, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 152, Springer-Verlag, pp. 103–126, ISBN   0-387-94365-X
  5. Hong, Seok-Hee; Nagamochi, Hiroshi (2011), "Extending Steinitz's theorem to upward star-shaped polyhedra and spherical polyhedra", Algorithmica, 61 (4): 1022–1076, doi:10.1007/s00453-011-9570-x, MR   2852056