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In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex.
Examples include Circoporus octahedrus, Circogonia icosahedra, Lithocubus geometricus and Circorrhegma dodecahedra; the shapes of these creatures are indicated by their names. [5] The outer protein shells of many viruses form regular polyhedra. For example, HIV is enclosed in a regular icosahedron, as is the head of a typical myovirus. [6] [7]
Regular polyhedron. Platonic solid: Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron; Regular spherical polyhedron. Dihedron, Hosohedron; Kepler–Poinsot polyhedron (Regular star polyhedra) Small stellated dodecahedron, Great stellated dodecahedron, Great icosahedron, Great dodecahedron; Abstract regular polyhedra (Projective polyhedron)
An example is the Szilassi polyhedron, a toroidal polyhedron that realizes the Heawood map. In this case, the polyhedron is much less symmetric than the underlying map, but in some cases it is possible for self-crossing polyhedra to realize some or all of the symmetries of a regular map.
A convex polyhedron whose faces are regular polygons is known as a Johnson solid, or sometimes as a Johnson–Zalgaller solid [3]. Some authors exclude uniform polyhedra from the definition. A uniform polyhedron is a polyhedron in which the faces are regular and they are isogonal ; examples include Platonic and Archimedean solids as well as ...
A cell is the three-dimensional analogue of a face, and is therefore a polyhedron. Each face must join exactly two cells, analogous to the way in which each edge of a polyhedron joins just two faces. Like any polytope, the elements of a 4-polytope cannot be subdivided into two or more sets which are also 4-polytopes, i.e. it is not a compound.
A vertex figure (of a 4-polytope) is a polyhedron, seen by the arrangement of neighboring vertices around a given vertex. For regular 4-polytopes, this vertex figure is a regular polyhedron. An edge figure is a polygon, seen by the arrangement of faces around an edge. For regular 4-polytopes, this edge figure will always be a regular polygon.
An example of this approach defines a polytope as a set of points that admits a simplicial decomposition. In this definition, a polytope is the union of finitely many simplices, with the additional property that, for any two simplices that have a nonempty intersection, their intersection is a vertex, edge, or higher dimensional face of the two. [4]