The pentagonal
icositetrahedron is the 24-faced dual
polyhedron of the snub cube and Wenninger dual . The mineral
cuprite ( ) forms in pentagonal icositetrahedral
crystals (Steinhaus 1999, pp. 207 and 209).
Because it is the dual of the chiral snub cube, the pentagonal icositetrahedron
also comes in two enantiomorphous
forms, known as laevo (left) and dextro (right). An attractive dual of the two enantiomers
superposed on one another is illustrated above.
Surprisingly, the tribonacci constant is intimately related
to the metric properties of the pentagonal icositetrahedron cube.
Its irregular pentagonal faces have vertex angles of
(four times) and
(once), where is a polynomial root and is the tribonacci constant.
The dual formed from a snub cube with
unit edge length has side lengths
The circumradius is given by
The surface area given by
and volume given by
Holden, A. Shapes, Space, and Symmetry. New York: Columbia University
Press, p. 55, 1971.
Steinhaus, H. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd ed. New York: Dover, 1999.
Wenninger, M. J. Dual Models. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,
p. 28, 1983.
|