TOPICS
Search

16-Cell


16Cell

The 16-cell beta_4 is the finite regular four-dimensional cross polytope with Schläfli symbol {3,3,4}. It is also known as the hyperoctahedron (Buekenhout and Parker 1998) or hexadecachoron, and is composed of 16 tetrahedra, with 4 to an edge. It has 8 vertices, 24 edges, and 32 faces. It is one of the six regular polychora.

The 16-cell is a four-dimensional dipyramid based on the three-dimensional square dipyramid with its two apices in opposite directions along the fourth dimension (Coxeter 1973, p. 121).

The 16-cell is the dual of the tesseract.

The vertices of the 16-cell with circumradius 1 and edge length sqrt(2) are the permutations of (+/-1, 0, 0, 0) (Coxeter 1969, p. 403). There are 2 distinct nonzero distances between vertices of the 16-cell in 4-space.

For k=0, 1, 2, 3, the number of k-dimensional faces of the 16-cell is

 f_k=2^(k+1)(4; k+1),

giving the face vector (8,24,32,16). Thus its face numbers are scaled binomial coefficients, connecting them to Pascal's triangle and the binomial theorem.

The 16-cell has

 2^5(2^7·3^3+1+3^2)=110912

distinct nets (Buekenhout and Parker 1998). The order of the automorphism group is 2^7·3=384 (Buekenhout and Parker 1998).

Its skeleton is the 16-cell graph.


See also

11-Cell, 16-Cell Graph, 24-Cell, 57-Cell, 120-Cell, 600-Cell, Binomial Theorem, Cell, Cross Polytope, Hypercube, Pascal's Triangle, Pentatope, Polychoron, Polytope, Tesseract

Explore with Wolfram|Alpha

WolframAlpha

More things to try:

References

Buekenhout, F. and Parker, M. "The Number of Nets of the Regular Convex Polytopes in Dimension <=4." Disc. Math. 186, 69-94, 1998.Coxeter, H. S. M. Introduction to Geometry, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1969.Coxeter, H. S. M. Regular Polytopes, 3rd ed. New York: Dover, pp. 121-122, 156, 158, and 243, 1973.Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry. London, England: Penguin, p. 210, 1991.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

16-Cell

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "16-Cell." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/16-Cell.html

Subject classifications