It would really be a pain to count the faces of this polyhedron, in order to verify that there are 270 of them. Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to do so. The polyhedron above is made of rhombus-shaped panels which correspond to the thirty faces of the rhombic triacontahedron. Each of these panels contains nine faces: one square, surrounded by eight triangles. Since (9)(30) = 270, it is therefore possible to see that this polyehdron has 270 faces, without actually going to the trouble to count them, one at a time.

The software I used to make this polyhedron may be found at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php, and is called Stella 4d. With Stella 4d, a single mouse-click will let you see the dual of a polyhedron. Here’s the dual of the one above.

This polyhedron is unusual, in that it has faces with nine sides (enneagons, or nonagons), as well as fifteen sides (pentadecagons). However, these enneagons and pentadecagons aren’t regular — yet — but they will be in the next post.