Someone found this, and “liked” it, in my old Facebook pictures. I had forgotten all about it, until this happened. It is a mandala, made of rhombi, with nine-fold symmetry, made in 2010 with Geometer’s Sketchpad — two years before I started this blog.
The stellation-series of the rhombic enneacontahedron has many polyhedra which are, to be blunt, not much to look at — but there are some attractive “gems” hidden among this long series of polyhedral stellations. The one above, the 33rd stellation, is the first one attractive one I found — using, of course, my own, purely subjective, esthetic criteria.
The next attractive stellation I found in this series is the 80th stellation. Unlike the 33rd, it is chiral.
And, after that, the 129th stellation, which is also chiral:
Next, the 152nd (and non-chiral) stellation:
I also found the non-chiral 158th stellation worthy of inclusion here:
After that, the chiral 171st stellation was the next one to attract my attention:
The next one to attract my notice was the also-chiral 204th stellation:
Some polyhedral stellation-series are incredibly long, with thousands, or even millions, of stellations possible before one reaches the final stellation, after which stellating the polyehdron one more time causes it to “wrap around” to the original polyhedron. Knowing this, I lost patience, and simply jumped straight to the final stellation of the rhombic triacontahedron — the last image in this post:
All of these images were created using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, a program available at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php. For anyone interested in seriously studying polyhedra, I consider this program an indispensable research tool (and, no, I receive no compensation for all this free advertising for Stella which appears on my blog). There’s a free trial version available — why not give it a try?
This polyhedron was created by performing vertex-based zonohedrifications of a dodecahedron — twice. The first zonohedrification produced a rhombic enneacontahedron, various version of which I have blogged many times before, but performing a second zonohedrification of the same type was a new experiment. It has 1230 faces, 1532 vertices, and 2760 edges. All of its edges have equal length. I created the models in this post using Stella 4d, a program you can buy, or try for free, right here.
Here is the dual of this zonohedron, which has 1532 faces, 1230 vertices, and 2760 edges. This “flipping” of the numbers of faces and vertices, with the number of edges staying the same, always happens with dual polyhedra. I do not know of a name for the class of polyhedra made of zonohedron-duals, but, if any reader of this post knows of one, please leave this name in a comment.
While the polyhedron above, informally known as the “soccer ball,” has icosidodecahedral symmetry, its coloring-scheme does not. Instead, I colored the faces in such a way that the coloring-scheme has pyritohedral symmetry — the symmetry of a standard volleyball. This rotating image was made with Stella 4d, a program you can buy, or try for free, right here: http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
Sharp-eyed, regular readers of this blog will notice that this is the same polyhedron shown in the previous post, which was described as the “final stellation of the compound of five cubes,” due to the coloring scheme used in the first image there, which had five colors “inherited” from each of the differently-colored cubes in the five-cube compound. This image, by contrast, is shown in rainbow-color mode.
How can the rhombic triacontahedron and the compound of five cubes have the same final stellation? Simple: the compound of five cubes is, itself, a member of the stellation-series of the rhombic triacontahedron. Because of this, those two solids end up at the same place, after all possible stellations are completed, just as you will reach 1,000, counting by ones, whether you start at one, or start at, say, 170.
I am grateful to Robert Webb for pointing this out to me. He’s the person who wrote Stella 4d, the software I use to make these images of rotating polyhedra. His program may be found at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php — and there is a free trial version available for download, so you can try Stella before deciding whether or not to purchase the fully-functioning version.
Since faceting is the reciprocal process of stellation, the dual of the polyhedron above is a faceted icosidodecahedron, for the icosidodecahedron is the dual of the rhombic triacontahedron. Here is an image of that particular faceting of the icosidodecahedron, colored, this time, by face-type:
The version of the final stellation of the compound of five cubes shown above has its colors derived from the traditional five-color version of the original compound, itself. The one below, by contrast, has its colors selected by face-type, without regard for the original compound.
Both of these virtual models were created with Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, software available at this website. Also, for more about this particular polyhedron, please see the next post.
To make a faceted version of the rhombicosidodecahedron, one first (1) starts with a rhombicosidodecahedron, one of the Archimedean solids, then (2) removes the faces and edges of this polyhedron, leaving all the vertices in place, and then (3) connects these vertices in a different way than they were connected in the original polyhedron, forming new edges and faces. Faceting is the reciprocal operation to polyhedral stellation.
This polyhedron was made using Stella 4d, software available here.
Because the snub dodecahedron is chiral, the polyhedral cluster, above, is also chiral, as only one enantiomer of the snub dodecahedron was used when augmenting the single icosahedron, which is hidden at the center of the cluster.
As is the case with all chiral polyhedra, this cluster can be used to make a compound of itself, and its own enantiomer (or “mirror-image”):
The image above uses the same coloring-scheme as the first image shown in this post. If, however, the two enantiomorphic components are each given a different overall color, this second cluster looks quite different:
All three of these virtual models were created using Stella 4d, software available at this website.
I made this compound using software called Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator. This program may be purchased (or a trial download tried for free) at this website.
All four of these rotating images were created using software called Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator. You can buy this program, or try it for free, at this website. Faceting is the inverse function of stellation, and involves connecting the vertices of an already-established polyhedron in new ways, to create different polyhedra from the one with which one started. For each of these, the convex hull is the great rhombcuboctahedron, itself.
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