The red component of this compound is one of an infinite number of possible pyritohedral dodecahedra. It’s shown by itself in the image below.
I made this compound using Stella 4d, a program you can try for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
I made this using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, which you can try for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
I made this using Stella 4d, which you can try for free at this website.
Both the Platonic icosahedron and the golden icosahedron have twenty triangular faces. In the Platonic version, these faces are all equilateral triangles. The golden icosahedron has eight such triangles, but the other twelve are golden triangles, which have a leg-to-base ratio which is the golden ratio. These golden triangles appear in pairs, and the six pairs are arranged in such a way as to make this a solid with pyritohedral symmetry: the symmetry of a standard volleyball.
A net for the golden icosahedron appears below. Both images were made using a program called Stella 4d, which you can try for free right here.
I created this using Stella 4d, which you can try for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php. Starting with the Platonic dodecahedron, I dropped the symmetry of the model down from icosahedral to tetrahedral, then stellated it six times. I also put the resulting polyhedron into “rainbow color mode” before making this .gif image.
To make this polyhedron using Stella 4d (available here), I began with the dodecahedron, dropped the symmetry of the model from icosahedral to tetrahedral, and then stellated it thirteen times.
This stellated polyhedron has pyritohedral symmetry, but this is easier to see in its convex hull:
The eight blue triangles in this convex hull are equilateral, while the twelve yellow ones are golden isosceles triangles.
I made this using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator. You can try this program for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
Software credit: I used Stella 4d to make this, and you can find that program at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php, with a free trial download available there.
Mathematicians have discovered more than one set of rules for polyhedral stellation. The software I use for rapidly manipulating polyhedra (Stella 4d, available here, including as a free trial download) lets the user choose between different sets of stellation criteria, but I generally favor what are called the “fully supported” stellation rules.
For this exercise, I still used the fully supported stellation rules, but set Stella to view these polyhedra as having only tetrahedral symmetry, rather than icosidodecahedral (or “icosahedral”) symmetry. For the icosahedron, this tetrahedral symmetry can be seen in this coloring-pattern.
The next image shows what the icosahedron looks like after a single stellation, when performed through the “lens” of tetrahedral symmetry. This stellation extends the red triangles as kites, and hides the yellow triangles from view in the process.
The second such stellation produces this polyhedron — a pyritohedral dodecahedron — by further-extending the red faces, and obscuring the blue triangles in the process.
The third tetrahedral stellation of the icosahedron produces another pyritohedral figure, which further demonstrates that pyritohedral symmetry is related to both icosidodecahedral and tetrahedral symmetry.
The fourth such stellation produces a Platonic octahedron, but one where the coloring-scheme makes it plain that Stella is still viewing this figure as having tetrahedral symmetry. Given that the octahedron itself has cuboctahedral (or “octahedral”) symmetry, this is an increase in the number of polyhedral symmetry-types which have appeared, so far, in this brief survey.
Next, I looked at the fifth tetrahedral stellation of the icosahedron, and was surprised at what I found.
While I was curious about what would happen if I continued stellating this polyhedron, I also wanted to see this fifth stellation’s convex hull, since I could already tell it would have only hexagons and triangles as faces. Here is that convex hull:
For the last step in this survey, I performed one more tetrahedral stellation, this time on the convex hull I had just produced.
Twelve of the faces of this polyhedron are pink, and the other twenty-four are blue. It has no faces which are not pentagons. I made it using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, which is avialable at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
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