| Regular hexadecagon | |
|---|---|
 A regular hexadecagon | |
| Type | Regular polygon |
| Edges and vertices | 16 |
| Schläfli symbol | {16}, t{8}, tt{4} |
| Coxeter–Dynkin diagrams |     |
| Symmetry group | Dihedral (D16), order 2×16 |
| Internal angle (degrees) | 157.5° |
| Properties | Convex, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal |
| Dual polygon | Self |
In mathematics, a hexadecagon (sometimes called a hexakaidecagon or 16-gon) is a sixteen-sided polygon. [1]
A regular hexadecagon is a hexadecagon in which all angles are equal and all sides are congruent. Its Schläfli symbol is {16} and can be constructed as a truncated octagon, t{8}, and a twice-truncated square tt{4}. A truncated hexadecagon, t{16}, is a triacontadigon, {32}.
As 16 = 24 (a power of two), a regular hexadecagon is constructible using compass and straightedge: this was already known to ancient Greek mathematicians. [2]
Each angle of a regular hexadecagon is 157.5 degrees, and the total angle measure of any hexadecagon is 2520 degrees.
The area of a regular hexadecagon with edge length t is
Because the hexadecagon has a number of sides that is a power of two, its area can be computed in terms of the circumradius R by truncating Viète's formula:
Since the area of the circumcircle is the regular hexadecagon fills approximately 97.45% of its circumcircle.
 | The 14 symmetries of a regular hexadecagon. Lines of reflections are blue through vertices, purple through edges, and gyration orders are given in the center. Vertices are colored by their symmetry position. |
The regular hexadecagon has Dih16 symmetry, order 32. There are 4 dihedral subgroups: Dih8, Dih4, Dih2, and Dih1, and 5 cyclic subgroups: Z16, Z8, Z4, Z2, and Z1, the last implying no symmetry.
On the regular hexadecagon, there are 14 distinct symmetries. John Conway labels full symmetry as r32 and no symmetry is labeled a1. The dihedral symmetries are divided depending on whether they pass through vertices (d for diagonal) or edges (p for perpendiculars) Cyclic symmetries in the middle column are labeled as g for their central gyration orders. [3]
The most common high symmetry hexadecagons are d16, an isogonal hexadecagon constructed by eight mirrors can alternate long and short edges, and p16, an isotoxal hexadecagon constructed with equal edge lengths, but vertices alternating two different internal angles. These two forms are duals of each other and have half the symmetry order of the regular hexadecagon.
Each subgroup symmetry allows one or more degrees of freedom for irregular forms. Only the g16 subgroup has no degrees of freedom but can seen as directed edges.
| 16-cube projection | 112 rhomb dissection | |
|---|---|---|
 |  Regular |  Isotoxal |
Coxeter states that every zonogon (a 2m-gon whose opposite sides are parallel and of equal length) can be dissected into m(m-1)/2 parallelograms. [4] In particular this is true for regular polygons with evenly many sides, in which case the parallelograms are all rhombi. For the regular hexadecagon, m=8, and it can be divided into 28: 4 squares and 3 sets of 8 rhombs. This decomposition is based on a Petrie polygon projection of an 8-cube, with 28 of 1792 faces. The list OEIS: A006245 enumerates the number of solutions as 1232944, including up to 16-fold rotations and chiral forms in reflection.
 8-cube |  |  |  |  |
| {8}#{ } | {8⁄3}#{ } | {8⁄5}#{ } |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| A regular skew hexadecagon is seen as zig-zagging edges of an octagonal antiprism, an octagrammic antiprism, and an octagrammic crossed-antiprism. | ||
A skew hexadecagon is a skew polygon with 24 vertices and edges but not existing on the same plane. The interior of such an hexadecagon is not generally defined. A skew zig-zag hexadecagon has vertices alternating between two parallel planes.
A regular skew hexadecagon is vertex-transitive with equal edge lengths. In 3-dimensions it will be a zig-zag skew hexadecagon and can be seen in the vertices and side edges of an octagonal antiprism with the same D8d, [2+,16] symmetry, order 32. The octagrammic antiprism, s{2,16/3} and octagrammic crossed-antiprism, s{2,16/5} also have regular skew octagons.
The regular hexadecagon is the Petrie polygon for many higher-dimensional polytopes, shown in these skew orthogonal projections, including:
| A15 | B8 | D9 | 2B2 (4D) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 15-simplex |  8-orthoplex |  8-cube |  611 |  161 |  8-8 duopyramid |  8-8 duoprism |
A hexadecagram is a 16-sided star polygon, represented by symbol {16/n}. There are three regular star polygons, {16/3}, {16/5}, {16/7}, using the same vertices, but connecting every third, fifth or seventh points. There are also three compounds: {16/2} is reduced to 2{8} as two octagons, {16/4} is reduced to 4{4} as four squares and {16/6} reduces to 2{8/3} as two octagrams, and finally {16/8} is reduced to 8{2} as eight digons.
| Compound and star hexadecagons | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form | Convex polygon | Compound | Star polygon | Compound |
| Image |  {16/1} or {16} |  {16/2} or 2{8} |  {16/3} |  {16/4} or 4{4} |
| Interior angle | 157.5° | 135° | 112.5° | 90° |
| Form | Star polygon | Compound | Star polygon | Compound |
| Image |  {16/5} |  {16/6} or 2{8/3} |  {16/7} |  {16/8} or 8{2} |
| Interior angle | 67.5° | 45° | 22.5° | 0° |
Deeper truncations of the regular octagon and octagram can produce isogonal (vertex-transitive) intermediate hexadecagram forms with equally spaced vertices and two edge lengths. [5]
A truncated octagon is a hexadecagon, t{8}={16}. A quasitruncated octagon, inverted as {8/7}, is a hexadecagram: t{8/7}={16/7}. A truncated octagram {8/3} is a hexadecagram: t{8/3}={16/3} and a quasitruncated octagram, inverted as {8/5}, is a hexadecagram: t{8/5}={16/5}.
| Isogonal truncations of octagon and octagram | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quasiregular | Isogonal | Quasiregular | ||
 t{8}={16} |  |  |  |  t{8/7}={16/7} |
 t{8/3}={16/3} |  |  |  |  t{8/5}={16/5} |
In the early 16th century, Raphael was the first to construct a perspective image of a regular hexadecagon: the tower in his painting The Marriage of the Virgin has 16 sides, elaborating on an eight-sided tower in a previous painting by Pietro Perugino. [6]
Hexadecagrams (16-sided star polygons) are included in the Girih patterns in the Alhambra. [7]
An octagonal star can be seen as a concave hexadecagon:
The latter one is seen in many architectures from Christian to Islamic, and also in the logo of IRIB TV4.
In geometry, an n-gonal antiprism or n-antiprism is a polyhedron composed of two parallel direct copies of an n-sided polygon, connected by an alternating band of 2n triangles. They are represented by the Conway notation An.
In geometry, an octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces. The term is most commonly used to refer to the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex.
In geometry, a hexagon is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.
In geometry, the truncated cube, or truncated hexahedron, is an Archimedean solid. It has 14 regular faces, 36 edges, and 24 vertices.
In geometry, a prism is a polyhedron comprising an n-sided polygon base, a second base which is a translated copy of the first, and n other faces, necessarily all parallelograms, joining corresponding sides of the two bases. All cross-sections parallel to the bases are translations of the bases. Prisms are named after their bases, e.g. a prism with a pentagonal base is called a pentagonal prism. Prisms are a subclass of prismatoids.
In geometry, a truncated icosidodecahedron, rhombitruncated icosidodecahedron, great rhombicosidodecahedron, omnitruncated dodecahedron or omnitruncated icosahedron is an Archimedean solid, one of thirteen convex, isogonal, non-prismatic solids constructed by two or more types of regular polygon faces.
In geometry, an octagon is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon.
In geometry, a decagon is a ten-sided polygon or 10-gon. The total sum of the interior angles of a simple decagon is 1440°.
In Euclidean geometry, a regular polygon is a polygon that is direct equiangular and equilateral. Regular polygons may be either convex, star or skew. In the limit, a sequence of regular polygons with an increasing number of sides approximates a circle, if the perimeter or area is fixed, or a regular apeirogon, if the edge length is fixed.
In geometry, an icosagon or 20-gon is a twenty-sided polygon. The sum of any icosagon's interior angles is 3240 degrees.
In geometry, a dodecagon, or 12-gon, is any twelve-sided polygon.
In geometry, a triacontagon or 30-gon is a thirty-sided polygon. The sum of any triacontagon's interior angles is 5040 degrees.
In geometry, a pentadecagon or pentakaidecagon or 15-gon is a fifteen-sided polygon.
In Euclidean geometry, an equiangular polygon is a polygon whose vertex angles are equal. If the lengths of the sides are also equal then it is a regular polygon. Isogonal polygons are equiangular polygons which alternate two edge lengths.
In geometry, an octagram is an eight-angled star polygon.
In geometry, a tetradecagon or tetrakaidecagon or 14-gon is a fourteen-sided polygon.
In geometry, an octadecagon or 18-gon is an eighteen-sided polygon.
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
In geometry, an icositetragon or 24-gon is a twenty-four-sided polygon. The sum of any icositetragon's interior angles is 3960 degrees.
In geometry, an infinite skew polygon or skew apeirogon is an infinite 2-polytope with vertices that are not all colinear. Infinite zig-zag skew polygons are 2-dimensional infinite skew polygons with vertices alternating between two parallel lines. Infinite helical polygons are 3-dimensional infinite skew polygons with vertices on the surface of a cylinder.
