Six Pairs of Parallel Decagons

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Six Pairs of Parallel Decagons

Each pair is a different color. Because these decagons intersect in space, but do not meet at edges, they do not form a true polyhedron. They are merely a symmetrical configuration of twelve decagons in space, surrounding a central point.

I made this out a “true polyhedron” by hiding all the other faces from view. Before the hiding and recoloring of faces, this looked this way (you can click on it to enlarge it):

Augmented Convex hull

I used Stella 4d to make these images, and you can find that program at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

Tessellation Using Regular Hexacontakaihexagons, Regular Dodecagons, and Two Different (and Unusual) Concave, Equilateral Polygons

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Tessellation Using Regular Hexacontakaihexagons, Regular Dodecagons, and Two Different (and Unusual) Concave, Equilateral Polygons

Hexacontakaihexagons have 36 sides, and dodecagons, of course, have twelve. When a regular hexacontakaihexagon is surrounded by twelve regular dodecagons, in the manner shown here, adjacent dodecagons almost, but not quite, meet at vertices. The gaps between these near-concurrent vertices are so small that they cannot be seen in this diagram — a zoom-in would be required, with thinner line segments used for the sides of the regular polygons.

As a result, the yellow and purple concave polygons aren’t what they appear, at first, to be. They look like triconcave hexagons, but this is an illusion. The yellow ones, in sets of two regions that aren’t quite separate, are actually tetraconcave, equilateral dodecagons with a very narrow “waist” separating the two large halves of each of them. As for the purple ones, they appear to occur in groups of four — but each set of four is actually one polygon, with three such narrow “waists” separating four regions of near-equal area. These purple polygons are, therefore, equilateral and hexaconcave icosikaitetragons — that is, what most people would call 24-gons.