A tetrahedral ring is a term given in this work to a set of regular tetrahedra
joined face-to-face sharing a common edge (with internal conjoined faces removed).
These solids are deltahedra. The following table
summarizes names for specific values of
.
| polyhedron | |
| 1 | regular tetrahedron |
| 2 | equilateral triangular dipyramid |
| 3 | tritetrahedron |
Tetrahedral rings are deltahedra.
The
cases provides a refutation of an assertion of Aristotle that regular tetrahedra
fill space (Aristotle 1939, p. 319; Lagarias and Zong 2012). In actuality, there
is a small gap between the first and last member of this ring with angle
|
(1)
| |||
|
(2)
| |||
|
(3)
| |||
|
(4)
|
where
|
(5)
|
is the dihedral angle of the regular tetrahedron.
While the angle
does not appear to have a standard name in the literature, the term "Aristotle
gap" seems an apropos moniker for it.