Uniform honeycomb

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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 or an n-dimensional honeycomb.

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An n-dimensional uniform honeycomb can be constructed on the surface of n-spheres, in n-dimensional Euclidean space, and n-dimensional hyperbolic space. A 2-dimensional uniform honeycomb is more often called a uniform tiling or uniform tessellation.

Nearly all uniform tessellations can be generated by a Wythoff construction, and represented by a Coxeter–Dynkin diagram. The terminology for the convex uniform polytopes used in uniform polyhedron, uniform 4-polytope, uniform 5-polytope, uniform 6-polytope, uniform tiling, and convex uniform honeycomb articles were coined by Norman Johnson.

Wythoffian tessellations can be defined by a vertex figure. For 2-dimensional tilings, they can be given by a vertex configuration listing the sequence of faces around every vertex. For example, 4.4.4.4 represents a regular tessellation, a square tiling, with 4 squares around each vertex. In general an n-dimensional uniform tessellation vertex figures are defined by an (n−1)-polytope with edges labeled with integers, representing the number of sides of the polygonal face at each edge radiating from the vertex.

Examples of uniform honeycombs

2-dimensional tessellations
 SphericalEuclideanHyperbolic
 
Coxeter diagram CDel node 1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 6.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 7.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel infin.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node 1.png
Picture Uniform tiling 532-t012.png
Truncated icosidodecahedron
Uniform polyhedron-63-t012.png
Truncated trihexagonal tiling
Truncated triheptagonal tiling.svg
Truncated triheptagonal tiling
(Poincaré disk model)
H2 tiling 23i-7.png
Truncated triapeirogonal tiling
Vertex figure Great rhombicosidodecahedron vertfig.png Great rhombitrihexagonal tiling vertfig.svg Great rhombitriheptagonal tiling vertfig.png
3-dimensional honeycombs
 3-spherical3-Euclidean3-hyperbolic
 and paracompact uniform honeycomb
Coxeter diagram CDel node 1.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node.pngCDel 4.pngCDel node.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 4.pngCDel node.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node.pngCDel 4.pngCDel node.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel node.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node.pngCDel 4.pngCDel node.pngCDel node 1.pngCDel 6.pngCDel node.pngCDel 3.pngCDel node.pngCDel 4.pngCDel node.png
Picture Stereographic polytope 16cell colour.png
(Stereographic projection)
16-cell
Cubic honeycomb.png
cubic honeycomb
Hyperbolic orthogonal dodecahedral honeycomb.png
order-4 dodecahedral honeycomb
(Beltrami–Klein model)
Hyperbolic 3d order 4 hexagonal tiling.png
order-4 hexagonal tiling honeycomb
(Poincaré disk model)
Vertex figure 16-cell verf.svg
(Octahedron)
Cubic honeycomb verf.svg
(Octahedron)
Order-4 dodecahedral honeycomb verf.png
(Octahedron)
Order-4 hexagonal tiling honeycomb verf.png
(Octahedron)

See also

References