Tag Archives: kite

From the Rhombic Enneacontahedron to an All-Kite Polyhedron

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This is the rhombic enneacontahedron, one of the few well-known zonohedra. Its ninety faces have two types: sixty wide rhombi, and thirty narrow rhombi.

In the image above, the thirty narrow rhombi of the rhombic enneacontahedron have been augmented with prisms

The next step in my polyhedral play was to create the convex hull of this augmented rhombic enneacontahedron. This produced the solid shown above. To make the one shown below, I next used a function called “try to make faces regular.” The result is a symmetrohedron with 122 faces: 12 regular pentagons, 30 rhombi, 60 almost-square isosceles trapezoids, and thirty equilateral triangles.

Finally, I examined the dual of this symmetrohedron, which turned out to have 120 faces: two sets of sixty kites each.

The program I used to create these polyhedral images is called Stella 4d, and you can try it yourself (as a free trial download) at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

A Chiral Polyhedron Made of Kites and Triangles, Along with Its Dual, Made of Triangles and Isosceles Trapezoids

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To make this polyhedron using Stella 4d (available here), one starts with the icosahedron, drops the symmetry of the model down from icosahedral to tetrahedral, and then stellates it once. The result is a chiral solid featuring four triangular faces and twelve kites:

chiral polyhedron made of triangles and kites -- found while exploring tetstells of the icosahedron.gif

The dual of this polyhedron, which is also chiral, has four triangular faces, and twelve faces which are isosceles trapezoids. It is a type of faceted dodecahedron — a partial faceting, meaning it is made without using all of the dodecahedron’s vertices.

Faceted Dodeca.gif

Eight Kite-Rhombus Solids, Plus Five All-Kite Polyhedra — the Convex Hulls of the Thirteen Archimedean-Catalan Compounds

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In a kite-rhombus solid, or KRS, all faces are either kites or rhombi, and there are at least some of both of these quadrilateral-types as faces. I have found eight such polyhedra, all of which are formed by creating the convex hull of different Archimedean-Catalan base-dual compounds. Not all Archimedean-Catalan compounds produce kite-rhombus solids, but one of the eight that does is derived from the truncated dodecahedron, as explained below.

Trunc Dodeca

The next step is to create the compound of this solid and its dual, the triakis icosahedron. In the image below, this dual is the blue polyhedron.

Trunc Dodeca dual the triakis icosahedron

The convex hull of this compound, below, I’m simply calling “the KRS derived from the truncated dodecahedron,” until and unless someone invents a better name for it.

KR solid based on the truncated dodecahedron

The next KRS shown is derived, in the same manner, from the truncated tetrahedron.

KR solid based on the truncated tetrahedron

Here is the KRS derived from the truncated cube.

KR solid based on the truncated cube

The truncated icosahedron is the “seed” from which the next KRS shown is derived. This KRS is a “stretched” form of a zonohedron called the rhombic enneacontahedron.

KR solid based on the truncated icosahedron

Another of these kite-rhombus solids, shown below, is based on the truncated octahedron.

KR solid based on the truncated octahedron

The next KRS shown is based on the rhombcuboctahedron.

KR solid derived from the rhombcuboctahedron

Two of the Archimedeans are chiral, and they both produce chiral kite-rhombus solids. This one is derived from the snub cube.

KR solid based on the snube cube

Finally, to complete this set of eight, here is the KRS based on the snub dodecahedron.

KR solid based on the snub dodecahedron

You may be wondering what happens when this same process is applied to the other five Archimedean solids. The answer is that all-kite polyhedra are produced; they have no rhombic faces. Two are “stretched” forms of Catalan solids, and are derived from the cuboctahedron and the icosidodecahedron:

If this procedure is applied to the rhombicosidodecahedron, the result is an all-kite polyhedron with two different face-types, as seen below.

all kited based on the RID

The two remaining Archimedean solids are the great rhombcuboctahedron and the great rhombicosidodecahedron, each of which produces a polyhedron with three different types of kites as faces.

The polyhedron-manipulation and image-production for this post was performed using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, which may be purchased or tried for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

An Oblique Truncation of the Tetrahedron

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kite-bounded tetrahedron

This polyhedron has sixteen faces: four equilateral triangles, and a dozen kites. It was created using Stella 4d, which may be found at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

A Polyhedron Featuring 180 Kites as Faces, Plus Related Polyhedra

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If one starts with the great rhombicosidodecahedron, then makes a compound of it, and its dual, and then forms the convex hull of that compound, this is the result:

180 kites 60&60&60

This polyhedron has 180 faces, all of them kites. What’s more, there are equal numbers — sixty each — of the three different types of kites in this polyhedron.

It also has an interesting dual:

180 kites 60&60&60 the dual

These virtual polyhedral models were created using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, which you can buy, or try for free, right here. Stella contains a “try to make faces regular” function, and here is what appears if that operation is applied to the dual shown above:

180 kites dual with TTMFR

The dual of this figure is similar to the original polyhedron at the top of this post, featuring 180 kites, again: sixty each, of three different types:

180 kites with TTMFR