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Platonic Solids

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There are five Platonic Solids. Each one is a polyhedron (a solid with flat faces) They are special because every face is a regular polygon of the same size and shape. Example: each face of the cube is a square. They are also convex (no "dents" or indentations in them). They are named after Plato, a famous Greek philosopher and mathematician.

Platonic solid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron; that is, its faces are congruent regular polygons, with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex, and any line segment between points within the solid remaining entirely within the solid. All its edges are congruent, as are its angles. Considering similarity, there are five Platonic solids, as shown below. The name of each is derived from its number of faces: respectively, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20.

Tetrahedron

Cube (hexahedron)

Octahedron

Dodecahedron

Icosahedron

(Animation)

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The aesthetic beauty and symmetry of the Platonic solids have made them a favorite subject of geometers for thousands of years. They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who theorized that the classical elements were constructed from the regular solids.

Contents
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1 History 2 Combinatorial properties 3 Classification o o 3.1 Geometric proof 3.2 Topological proof

4 Geometric properties o o 4.1 Angles 4.2 Radii, area, and volume

5 Symmetry o o 5.1 Dual polyhedra 5.2 Symmetry groups

6 In nature and technology o 6.1 Liquid Crystals with symmetries of Platonic Solids

7 Related polyhedra and polytopes o o o 7.1 Uniform polyhedra 7.2 Tessellations 7.3 Higher dimensions

8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 External links

[edit]History

Kepler's Platonic solid model of the solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)

The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. Ornamented models of them can be found among the carved stone balls created by the lateneolithic people of Scotland at least 1000 years before Plato (Atiyah and Sutcliffe 2003). Dice go back to the dawn of civilization with shapes that augured formal charting of Platonic solids. The ancient Greeks studied the Platonic solids extensively. Some sources (such as Proclus) credit Pythagoras with their discovery. Other evidence suggests he may have only been familiar with the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron, and that the discovery of the octahedron and icosahedron belong to Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. In any case, Theaetetus gave a mathematical description of all five and may have been responsible for the first known proof that there are no other convex regular polyhedra. The Platonic solids feature prominently in the philosophy of Plato for whom they are named. Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly un-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents earth. These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up, in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the solidity of the Earth was believed to be due to the fact that the cube is the only regular solid that tesselates Euclidean space. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, "...the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithr(aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.[citation needed]

Euclid gave a complete mathematical description of the Platonic solids in the Elements, the last book (Book XIII) of which is devoted to their properties. Propositions 1317 in Book XIII describe the construction of the tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron in that order. For each solid Euclid finds the ratio of the diameter of the circumscribed sphere to the edge length. In Proposition 18 he argues that there are no further convex regular polyhedra. Andreas Speiser has advocated the view that the construction of the 5 regular solids is the chief goal of the deductive system canonized in the Elements.[1] Much of the information in Book XIII is probably derived from the work of Theaetetus. In the 16th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler attempted to find a relation between the five extraterrestrial planets known at that time and the five Platonic solids. In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler laid out a model of the solar system in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres. The six spheres each corresponded to one of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube. In this way the structure of the solar system and the distance relationships between the planets was dictated by the Platonic solids. In the end, Kepler's original idea had to be abandoned, but out of his research came his three laws of orbital dynamics, the first of which was that the orbits of planets are ellipses rather than circles, changing the course of physics and astronomy. He also discovered the Kepler solids. In the 20th century, attempts to link Platonic solids to the physical world were expanded to the electron shell model in chemistry by Robert Moon in a theory known as the "Moon Model".[2]

polyhedron [plhidrn]
n pl -drons, -dra [-dr] (Mathematics) a solid figure consisting of four or more plane faces (all polygons), pairs of which meet along an edge, three or more edges meeting at a vertex. In a regular polyhedron all the faces are identical regular polygons making equal angles with each other. Specific polyhedrons are named according to the number of faces, such as tetrahedron, icosahedron, etc. [from Greek poluedron, from POLY- + hedron side, base] polyhedral adj
Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

polyhedron

(p l -h dr n) Plural polyhedrons or polyhedra A three-dimensional geometric figure whose sides are polygons. A tetrahedron, for example, is a polyhedron having four triangular sides. A regular polyhedron is a polyhedron whose faces are all congruent regular polygons. The regular tetrahedron (pyramid), hexahedron (cube), octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron are the five regular polyhedrons. Regular polyhedrons are a type of

Archimedean solid.

Noun 1. regular tetrahedron - a tetrahedron with four equilateral triangular faces ideal solid, Platonic body, Platonic solid, regular convex polyhedron, regular convex solid, regular polyhedron - any one of five solids whose faces are congruent regular polygons and whose polyhedral angles are all congruent

Platonic Solids

According to: <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html>, the Platonic solids (aka the regular solids or regular polyhedra) are convex polyhedra with equivalent faces composed of congruent convex regular polygons. [Obviously, such a description is crystal clear -- which is why its better to see them than try to describe them in words, i.e. a picture is worth a thousand words!] Meanwhile, there are only five such solids: the cube, dodecahedron, icosahedron, octahedron, and tetrahedron. The idea that there are only five was proved by Euclid in his last proposition (chapter or book 13) of the classic,The Elements. The Platonic solids are sometimes also called cosmic figures. The Platonic solids were described by Plato in his Timaeus c. 350 B.C.E. In this work, Plato equated the polyhedra with the elements: the cube with earth, tetrahedron with fire, the octahedron with air, the icosahedron with water, and the dodecahedron with the stuff of which the constellations and heavens were made.

Circumscribed (enclosed within a circle), the five Platonic solids can be represented by:

Or shown as plane figures, where the matched sides can be then be joined in 3 dimensions to complete the figure.

An excellent example of the latter idea when plane figures are folded into solid ones is Buckminister Fullers Dyma xion [link to <http://w ww.bfi.org/m ap.htm> where he was able to accomplish a more accurate projection of the Earths continents using almost exclusively equilateral triangles. The ICOSA triangles are roughly 63o 26 on an edge -- representing roughly 3,806 nautical miles. In fact, the Fuller Projection provides for a much more accurate appearance than typical Mecator Projections used in maps throughout the world. The tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron have a common ingredient of equilateral triangles, but the dodecahedron and icosahedron have an impressive connection as well. Besides having either 20 vertices and 12 surfaces or vice versa, perpendiculars from the midpoints of the surfaces of one solid define the points of the other solid.

The only pyramid that is a Platonic Solid is the tetrahedron. The more famous pyramids -such as The Great Pyramids of Giza and Teotihuacan -- are Square Pyramids (i.e. a square base, and four triangles meeting at the apex). There are also Pentagonal Pyramids -such as the alleged five-sided pyramid at Cydonia on Mars -- Polygon Pyramids, and variations on a theme, e.g. Interlocked Tetrahedra (known to Drunvalo

Melchizedek as the Merkaba) and a Pentagonal Rotunda.

And then, of course, there are the 92 Johnson Solids, which are described rather nicely at <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JohnsonSolid.html>.

(5/31/05) One variation of particular interest is the Star Tetrahedron, a three dimensional Star of David which is known also as a Merkaba. This shape contains all manner of possibilities, both for healing and even, theoretically, to transcend into other dimensions. Hmmm... just might be something worth checking out! Meanwhile, one might return to... Sacred Geometry Or leap forward to: Vesica Pisces A Graphics Description

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