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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. There are only five such polyhedra:
One might characterise the Greek definition as follows: A regular polygon is a planar figure with all edges equal and all corners equal. A regular polyhedron is a solid (convex) figure with all faces being congruent regular polygons, the same number arranged all alike around each vertex.
A solid angle of π sr is one quarter of that subtended by all of space. When all the solid angles at the vertices of a tetrahedron are smaller than π sr, O lies inside the tetrahedron, and because the sum of distances from O to the vertices is a minimum, O coincides with the geometric median, M, of the vertices.
The most familiar dodecahedron is the regular dodecahedron with regular pentagons as faces, which is a Platonic solid. There are also three regular star dodecahedra, which are constructed as stellations of the convex form. All of these have icosahedral symmetry, order 120.
The convex regular icosahedron is usually referred to simply as the regular icosahedron, one of the five regular Platonic solids, and is represented by its Schläfli symbol {3, 5}, containing 20 triangular faces, with 5 faces meeting around each vertex.
One special case is the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. Regular octahedra occur in nature as crystal structures. Many types of irregular octahedra also exist, including both convex and non-convex shapes.
A common and somewhat naive definition of a polyhedron is that it is a solid whose boundary can be covered by finitely many planes [4] [5] or that it is a solid formed as the union of finitely many convex polyhedra. [6]
Of the eight convex deltahedra, three are Platonic solids and five are Johnson solids. They are: [2] regular tetrahedron, a pyramid with four equilateral triangles, one of which can be considered the base. triangular bipyramid, regular octahedron, and pentagonal bipyramid; bipyramids with six, eight, and ten equilateral triangles, respectively ...