Sixty and Sixty: A Chiral Polyhedron, as well as the Compound of It, and Its Own Reflection

60 and 60 -- chiral

This polyhedron is chiral, meaning that (unlike many well-known polyhedra) it exists in “left-handed” and “right-handed” forms — reflections of each other. These “reflections” are also called enantiomers. I call this polyhedron “sixty and sixty” because there are sixty faces which are irregular, purple quadrilaterals, as well as sixty faces which are irregular, orange pentagons.

I stumbled upon this polyhedron while playing around with Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, software you can try right here. For those who research polyhedra, I know of no better tool.

To see the other enantiomer, there is a simple way — just hold a mirror in front of your computer screen, with it showing the image above, and look in the mirror!

With any chiral polyhedron, it is possible to make a compound out of the two enantiomers. Here is what the compound looks like, for this “sixty and sixty” polyhedron cannot be seen this way, so here is an image of it, also created using Stella 4d.

60 and 60 chiral --Compound of enantiomorphic pair

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