In geometry, a polytope (e.g. a polygon or polyhedron) or a tiling is isogonal or vertex-transitive if all its vertices are equivalent under the symmetries of the figure. This implies that each vertex is surrounded by the same kinds of face in the same or reverse order, and with the same angles between corresponding faces.
Technically, one says that for any two vertices there exists a symmetry of the polytope mapping the first isometrically onto the second. Other ways of saying this are that the group of automorphisms of the polytope acts transitively on its vertices, or that the vertices lie within a single symmetry orbit .
All vertices of a finite n-dimensional isogonal figure exist on an (n−1)-sphere. [1]
The term isogonal has long been used for polyhedra. Vertex-transitive is a synonym borrowed from modern ideas such as symmetry groups and graph theory.
The pseudorhombicuboctahedron –which is not isogonal –demonstrates that simply asserting that "all vertices look the same" is not as restrictive as the definition used here, which involves the group of isometries preserving the polyhedron or tiling.
Isogonal apeirogons |
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Isogonal skew apeirogons |
All regular polygons, apeirogons and regular star polygons are isogonal. The dual of an isogonal polygon is an isotoxal polygon.
Some even-sided polygons and apeirogons which alternate two edge lengths, for example a rectangle, are isogonal.
All planar isogonal 2n-gons have dihedral symmetry (Dn, n = 2, 3, ...) with reflection lines across the mid-edge points.
D2 | D3 | D4 | D7 |
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Isogonal rectangles and crossed rectangles sharing the same vertex arrangement | Isogonal hexagram with 6 identical vertices and 2 edge lengths. [2] | Isogonal convex octagon with blue and red radial lines of reflection | Isogonal "star" tetradecagon with one vertex type, and two edge types [3] |
Distorted square tiling |
A distorted truncated square tiling |
An isogonal polyhedron and 2D tiling has a single kind of vertex. An isogonal polyhedron with all regular faces is also a uniform polyhedron and can be represented by a vertex configuration notation sequencing the faces around each vertex. Geometrically distorted variations of uniform polyhedra and tilings can also be given the vertex configuration.
D3d, order 12 | Th, order 24 | Oh, order 48 | |
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4.4.6 | 3.4.4.4 | 4.6.8 | 3.8.8 |
A distorted hexagonal prism (ditrigonal trapezoprism) | A distorted rhombicuboctahedron | A shallow truncated cuboctahedron | A hyper-truncated cube |
Isogonal polyhedra and 2D tilings may be further classified:
These definitions can be extended to higher-dimensional polytopes and tessellations. All uniform polytopes are isogonal, for example, the uniform 4-polytopes and convex uniform honeycombs.
The dual of an isogonal polytope is an isohedral figure, which is transitive on its facets.
A polytope or tiling may be called k-isogonal if its vertices form k transitivity classes. A more restrictive term, k-uniform is defined as a k-isogonal figure constructed only from regular polygons. They can be represented visually with colors by different uniform colorings.
This truncated rhombic dodecahedron is 2-isogonal because it contains two transitivity classes of vertices. This polyhedron is made of squares and flattened hexagons. | This demiregular tiling is also 2-isogonal (and 2-uniform). This tiling is made of equilateral triangle and regular hexagonal faces. | 2-isogonal 9/4 enneagram (face of the final stellation of the icosahedron) |
In geometry, an Archimedean solid is one of 13 convex polyhedra whose faces are regular polygons and whose vertices are all symmetric to each other. They were first enumerated by Archimedes. They belong to the class of convex uniform polyhedra, the convex polyhedra with regular faces and symmetric vertices, which is divided into the Archimedean solids, the five Platonic solids, and the two infinite families of prisms and antiprisms. The pseudorhombicuboctahedron is an extra polyhedron with regular faces and congruent vertices, but it is not generally counted as an Archimedean solid because it is not vertex-transitive. An even larger class than the convex uniform polyhedra is the Johnson solids, whose regular polygonal faces do not need to meet in identical vertices.
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, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.
In elementary geometry, a polytope is a geometric object with flat sides (faces). Polytopes are the generalization of three-dimensional polyhedra to any number of dimensions. Polytopes may exist in any general number of dimensions n as an n-dimensional polytope or n-polytope. For example, a two-dimensional polygon is a 2-polytope and a three-dimensional polyhedron is a 3-polytope. In this context, "flat sides" means that the sides of a (k + 1)-polytope consist of k-polytopes that may have (k – 1)-polytopes in common.
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, a star polygon is a type of non-convex polygon. Regular star polygons have been studied in depth; while star polygons in general appear not to have been formally defined, certain notable ones can arise through truncation operations on regular simple and star polygons.
In geometry, a vertex figure, broadly speaking, is the figure exposed when a corner of a polyhedron or polytope is sliced off.
Euclidean plane tilings by convex regular polygons have been widely used since antiquity. The first systematic mathematical treatment was that of Kepler in his Harmonices Mundi.
In geometry, a uniform polyhedron has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive. It follows that all vertices are congruent.
In geometry, the hexagonal tiling or hexagonal tessellation is a regular tiling of the Euclidean plane, in which exactly three hexagons meet at each vertex. It has Schläfli symbol of {6,3} or t{3,6} .
In geometry, the square tiling, square tessellation or square grid is a regular tiling of the Euclidean plane. It has Schläfli symbol of {4,4}, meaning it has 4 squares around every vertex. Conway called it a quadrille.
In geometry, the triangular tiling or triangular tessellation is one of the three regular tilings of the Euclidean plane, and is the only such tiling where the constituent shapes are not parallelogons. Because the internal angle of the equilateral triangle is 60 degrees, six triangles at a point occupy a full 360 degrees. The triangular tiling has Schläfli symbol of {3,6}.
In geometry, a tessellation of dimension 2 or higher, or a polytope of dimension 3 or higher, is isohedral or face-transitive if 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 two faces A and B, there must be a symmetry of the entire figure by translations, rotations, and/or reflections that maps A onto B. For this reason, convex isohedral polyhedra are the shapes that will make fair dice.
In geometry, a polytope or a tiling is isotoxal or edge-transitive if its symmetries act transitively on its edges. Informally, this means that there is only one type of edge to the object: given two edges, there is a translation, rotation, and/or reflection that will move one edge to the other while leaving the region occupied by the object unchanged.
In geometry, a uniform tiling is a tessellation of the plane by regular polygon faces with the restriction of being vertex-transitive.
In geometry, a uniform honeycomb or uniform tessellation or infinite uniform polytope, is a vertex-transitive honeycomb made from uniform polytope facets. All of its vertices are identical and there is the same combination and arrangement of faces at each vertex. Its dimension can be clarified as n-honeycomb for an n-dimensional honeycomb.