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Deltahedron


A deltahedron is a polyhedron whose faces are congruent equilateral triangles (Wells 1986, p. 73). Note that polyhedra whose faces could be triangulated so as to be composed of coplanar equilateral triangles sharing an edge (such as the truncated tetrahedron, whose hexagonal faces could be considered as six conjoined equilateral triangles) are not allowed.

The term deltahedron should not be confused with "deltohedron," which is a synonym for trapezohedron.

DeltahedraConvex

There are an infinite number of deltahedra, but only eight convex ones (Freudenthal and van der Waerden 1947). The eight convex deltahedra have n=4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 20 faces. These are summarized in the table below and illustrated in the figures above.

DeltahedraConcave

The tritetrahedron and augmentations of the Platonic solids are concave deltahedra, as is the "caved in" augmented dodecahedron (icosahedron stellation I_(20); Wells 1991, p. 78).

Cundy (1952) identified 17 concave deltahedra with two kinds of polyhedron vertices.


See also

Augmentation, Gyroelongated Square Dipyramid, Icosahedron, Octahedron, Pentagonal Dipyramid, Spikey, Snub Disphenoid Tetrahedron, Triangular Dipyramid, Triaugmented Triangular Prism, Tritetrahedron

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References

Caspar, D. L. D. and Klug A. Fig. 8 in "Physical Principles in the Construction of Regular Viruses." Cold Spring Harbor Symp. 27, 1-24, 1962.Cundy, H. M. "Deltahedra." Math. Gaz. 36, 263-266, 1952.Cundy, H. and Rollett, A. "Deltahedra." §3.11 in Mathematical Models, 3rd ed. Stradbroke, England: Tarquin Pub., pp. 142-144, 1989.Freudenthal, H. and van der Waerden, B. L. "On an Assertion of Euclid." Simon Stevin 25, 115-121, 1947.Gardner, M. Fractal Music, Hypercards, and More: Mathematical Recreations from Scientific American Magazine. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 40, 53, and 58-60, 1992.Pugh, A. Polyhedra: A Visual Approach. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 35-36, 1976.Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, p. 73, 1986.Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. London: Penguin, pp. 51 and 78, 1991.

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Deltahedron

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Deltahedron." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Deltahedron.html

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