# Honeycomb (geometry)

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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. A novel honeycomb tessellation generator MATLAB code, HoneyMesher, can be found in Ref. [1]

## Contents

Honeycombs are usually constructed in ordinary Euclidean ("flat") space. They may also be constructed in non-Euclidean spaces, such as hyperbolic honeycombs. Any finite uniform polytope can be projected to its circumsphere to form a uniform honeycomb in spherical space.

## Classification

There are infinitely many honeycombs, which have only been partially classified. The more regular ones have attracted the most interest, while a rich and varied assortment of others continue to be discovered.

The simplest honeycombs to build are formed from stacked layers or slabs of prisms based on some tessellations of the plane. In particular, for every parallelepiped, copies can fill space, with the cubic honeycomb being special because it is the only regular honeycomb in ordinary (Euclidean) space. Another interesting family is the Hill tetrahedra and their generalizations, which can also tile the space.

### Uniform 3-honeycombs

A 3-dimensional uniform honeycomb is a honeycomb in 3-space composed of uniform polyhedral cells, and having all vertices the same (i.e., the group of [isometries of 3-space that preserve the tiling] is transitive on vertices ). There are 28 convex examples in Euclidean 3-space, [2] also called the Archimedean honeycombs .

A honeycomb is called regular if the group of isometries preserving the tiling acts transitively on flags, where a flag is a vertex lying on an edge lying on a face lying on a cell. Every regular honeycomb is automatically uniform. However, there is just one regular honeycomb in Euclidean 3-space, the cubic honeycomb. Two are quasiregular (made from two types of regular cells):

Type Regular cubic honeycomb Quasiregular honeycombs
Cells Cubic Octahedra and tetrahedra
Slab layer

The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb and gyrated tetrahedral-octahedral honeycombs are generated by 3 or 2 positions of slab layer of cells, each alternating tetrahedra and octahedra. An infinite number of unique honeycombs can be created by higher order of patterns of repeating these slab layers.

### Space-filling polyhedra

A honeycomb having all cells identical within its symmetries is said to be cell-transitive or isochoric. In the 3-dimensional euclidean space, a cell of such a honeycomb is said to be a space-filling polyhedron . [3] A necessary condition for a polyhedron to be a space-filling polyhedron is that its Dehn invariant must be zero, [4] [5] ruling out any of the Platonic solids other than the cube.

Five space-filling polyhedra can tessellate 3-dimensional euclidean space using translations only. They are called parallelohedra:

 Cube (parallelepiped) Hexagonal prism Rhombic dodecahedron Elongated dodecahedron Truncated octahedron cubic honeycomb Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb Rhombic dodecahedra Elongated dodecahedra Truncated octahedra

Other known examples of space-filling polyhedra include:

### Other honeycombs with two or more polyhedra

Sometimes, two [12] or more different polyhedra may be combined to fill space. Besides many of the uniform honeycombs, another well known example is the Weaire–Phelan structure, adopted from the structure of clathrate hydrate crystals [13]

The periodic unit of the Weaire–Phelan structure.
A honeycomb by left and right-handed versions of the same polyhedron.

### Non-convex 3-honeycombs

Documented examples are rare. Two classes can be distinguished:

• Non-convex cells which pack without overlapping, analogous to tilings of concave polygons. These include a packing of the small stellated rhombic dodecahedron, as in the Yoshimoto Cube.
• Overlapping of cells whose positive and negative densities 'cancel out' to form a uniformly dense continuum, analogous to overlapping tilings of the plane.

### Hyperbolic honeycombs

In 3-dimensional hyperbolic space, the dihedral angle of a polyhedron depends on its size. The regular hyperbolic honeycombs thus include two with four or five dodecahedra meeting at each edge; their dihedral angles thus are π/2 and 2π/5, both of which are less than that of a Euclidean dodecahedron. Apart from this effect, the hyperbolic honeycombs obey the same topological constraints as Euclidean honeycombs and polychora.

The 4 compact and 11 paracompact regular hyperbolic honeycombs and many compact and paracompact uniform hyperbolic honeycombs have been enumerated.

11 paracompact regular honeycombs

{6,3,3}

{6,3,4}

{6,3,5}

{6,3,6}

{4,4,3}

{4,4,4}

{3,3,6}

{4,3,6}

{5,3,6}

{3,6,3}

{3,4,4}

## Duality of 3-honeycombs

For every honeycomb there is a dual honeycomb, which may be obtained by exchanging:

cells for vertices.
faces for edges.

These are just the rules for dualising four-dimensional 4-polytopes, except that the usual finite method of reciprocation about a concentric hypersphere can run into problems.

The more regular honeycombs dualise neatly:

• The cubic honeycomb is self-dual.
• That of octahedra and tetrahedra is dual to that of rhombic dodecahedra.
• The slab honeycombs derived from uniform plane tilings are dual to each other in the same way that the tilings are.
• The duals of the remaining Archimedean honeycombs are all cell-transitive and have been described by Inchbald. [14]

## Self-dual honeycombs

Honeycombs can also be self-dual. All n-dimensional hypercubic honeycombs with Schläfli symbols {4,3n2,4}, are self-dual.

## Related Research Articles

A cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. As such, it is a quasiregular polyhedron, i.e. an Archimedean solid that is not only vertex-transitive but also edge-transitive. It is radially equilateral.

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 geometry, a 4-polytope is a four-dimensional polytope. It is a connected and closed figure, composed of lower-dimensional polytopal elements: vertices, edges, faces (polygons), and cells (polyhedra). Each face is shared by exactly two cells. The 4-polytopes were discovered by the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli before 1853.

In geometry, the Schläfli symbol is a notation of the form that defines regular polytopes and tessellations.

In geometry, the rhombic dodecahedron is a convex polyhedron with 12 congruent rhombic faces. It has 24 edges, and 14 vertices of 2 types. It is a Catalan solid, and the dual polyhedron of the cuboctahedron.

In geometry, the elongated square bipyramid is one of the Johnson solids (J15). As the name suggests, it can be constructed by elongating an octahedron by inserting a cube between its congruent halves.

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 rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb is a space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is the Voronoi diagram of the face-centered cubic sphere-packing, which has the densest possible packing of equal spheres in ordinary space.

The bitruncated cubic honeycomb is a space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space made up of truncated octahedra. It has 4 truncated octahedra around each vertex. Being composed entirely of truncated octahedra, it is cell-transitive. It is also edge-transitive, with 2 hexagons and one square on each edge, and vertex-transitive. It is one of 28 uniform honeycombs.

The quarter cubic honeycomb, quarter cubic cellulation or bitruncated alternated cubic honeycomb is a space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of tetrahedra and truncated tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:1. It is called "quarter-cubic" because its symmetry unit – the minimal block from which the pattern is developed by reflections – is four times that of the cubic honeycomb.

In geometry, a polytope of dimension 3 or higher is isohedral or face-transitive when all its faces are the same. More specifically, all faces must be not merely congruent but must be transitive, i.e. must lie within the same symmetry orbit. In other words, for any faces A and B, there must be a symmetry of the entire solid by rotations and reflections that maps A onto B. For this reason, convex isohedral polyhedra are the shapes that will make fair dice.

The triangular prismatic honeycomb or triangular prismatic cellulation is a space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed entirely of triangular prisms.

In geometry, a quasiregular polyhedron is a uniform polyhedron that has exactly two kinds of regular faces, which alternate around each vertex. They are vertex-transitive and edge-transitive, hence a step closer to regular polyhedra than the semiregular, which are merely vertex-transitive.

In geometry, a skew apeirohedron is an infinite skew polyhedron consisting of nonplanar faces or nonplanar vertex figures, allowing the figure to extend indefinitely without folding round to form a closed surface.

The order-6 dodecahedral honeycomb is one of 11 paracompact regular honeycombs in hyperbolic 3-space. It is paracompact because it has vertex figures composed of an infinite number of faces, with all vertices as ideal points at infinity. It has Schläfli symbol {5,3,6}, with six ideal dodecahedral cells surrounding each edge of the honeycomb. Each vertex is ideal, and surrounded by infinitely many dodecahedra. The honeycomb has a triangular tiling vertex figure.

In geometry and crystallography, a stereohedron is a convex polyhedron that fills space isohedrally, meaning that the symmetries of the tiling take any copy of the stereohedron to any other copy.

## References

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5. John Conway (2003-12-22). "Voronoi Polyhedron. geometry.puzzles". Newsgroup:  geometry.puzzles. Usenet:   Pine.LNX.4.44.0312221226380.25139-100000@fine318a.math.Princeton.EDU.
6. X. Qian, D. Strahs and T. Schlick, J. Comput. Chem.22(15) 1843–1850 (2001)
7. Archived 2015-06-30 at the Wayback Machine Gabbrielli, Ruggero. A thirteen-sided polyhedron which fills space with its chiral copy.
8. Pauling, Linus. The Nature of the Chemical Bond. Cornell University Press, 1960
9. Inchbald, Guy (July 1997), "The Archimedean honeycomb duals", The Mathematical Gazette , 81 (491): 213–219, doi:10.2307/3619198, JSTOR   3619198 .
Space Family ${\displaystyle {\tilde {A}}_{n-1}}$${\displaystyle {\tilde {C}}_{n-1}}$${\displaystyle {\tilde {B}}_{n-1}}$${\displaystyle {\tilde {D}}_{n-1}}$${\displaystyle {\tilde {G}}_{2}}$ / ${\displaystyle {\tilde {F}}_{4}}$ / ${\displaystyle {\tilde {E}}_{n-1}}$
E2 Uniform tiling {3[3]} δ3 hδ3 qδ3 Hexagonal
E3 Uniform convex honeycomb {3[4]} δ4 hδ4 qδ4
E4 Uniform 4-honeycomb {3[5]} δ5 hδ5 qδ5 24-cell honeycomb
E5 Uniform 5-honeycomb {3[6]} δ6 hδ6 qδ6
E6 Uniform 6-honeycomb {3[7]} δ7 hδ7 qδ7 222
E7 Uniform 7-honeycomb {3[8]} δ8 hδ8 qδ8 133331
E8 Uniform 8-honeycomb {3[9]} δ9 hδ9 qδ9 152251521
E9 Uniform 9-honeycomb {3[10]}δ10hδ10qδ10
E10Uniform 10-honeycomb{3[11]}δ11hδ11qδ11
En-1Uniform (n-1)-honeycomb {3[n]} δn hδn qδn 1k22k1k21