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The Cuboctahedron

Sara Schultz
Daniella Toma

GAT 9C
Scot Acre
27 February 2015

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The cuboctahedron is unique, 3-dimensional shape that is made up of six

squares and eight equilateral triangles. It has twelve identical vertices and twenty four
identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. A cuboctahedron can be
thought of in three different ways; a cube whose corners have been cut off at the
midpoints of the edges, a right square prism with four rectangular pyramids attached
onto the lateral faces, and eight tetrahedrons and six regular square pyramids. Given
one side of our cube to be 16.8 centimeters, the surface area and volume can be easily
found using any of three cases.
When given one length of the cube to be 16.8 centimeters, one side of the
cuboctahedron can easily be found. By making midpoints on each side of one face of
the cube and connecting them, a smaller square is created, which is one square face of
the cuboctahedron. One side of the cuboctahedrons square face is the length of one
edge of the cuboctahedron. When you create the midpoints, that makes each half
created by the midpoint 8.4 centimeters, which are also the legs of the isosceles
triangles created in each corner. To find the hypotenuse of these four triangles, also
known as one edge of your cuboctahedron, you can use 45 - 45 - 90 special triangle
properties. The hypotenuse of a 45 - 45 - 90 triangle is one of the legs multiplied by
2, making the hypotenuse, and one edge of our cuboctahedron 8.42 cm. The
measurements of the face of the cube and of the cuboctahedron are displayed below in
Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Finding the Edge of a Cuboctahedron

Figure 1 above shows how to find one edge of the cuboctahedron using the
measurement given to you for one side of the cube.
The total surface area of the cuboctahedron can be found by adding the surface
area of the 8 triangles and the surface area of the 6 squares that make up a
cuboctahedron. The area of one square face can be found by multiplying the base by its
height. This means that if one side of the cube is 8.42 cm then all you have to do is
multiply 8.42 cm by 8.42 cm and that gives you one square face to be 141.12 cm . To
find the area of one equilateral triangular face, you have to find the height of the
triangle. To find the height, you have to use 30 - 60 - 90 special triangle properties.
Since the edges of the triangle equal 8.42 cm, the height of the triangle is found by
multiplying half of the length of one edge by 3. By multiplying half of the length (4.22)
by 3, the height is found to be 4.26 cm. By plugging these numbers into the formula

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for the area of a triangle and the area of a square, you can find the total surface area.
The total surface area is found in Figure 2 below by adding all of surface areas for the
triangular and square faces.

Figure 2. Total Surface Area of a Cuboctahedron

Figure 2 shows how to find the total surface area of the cuboctahedron by
combining the surface area for all of the triangles and squares. The total surface for our
cuboctahedron is 282.243 + 846.72 cm.
The first case to think of a cuboctahedron is a cube whose corners have been cut
off at the midpoints of the edges. When the pyramids are cut off, they will leave you with
eight equilateral triangle faces. These are all of the triangular faces you will find on the
cuboctahedron. These eight pyramids are regular pyramids with an equilateral triangle
as the base. Since these pyramids were formed by connecting the midpoints of the
original cube with a measurement of 16.8 cm, each leg of these 45 - 45 - 90 triangles
are 8.4 cm. Since the base edge of the corner pyramid is the length of one side of the

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cuboctahedron, that makes the base edge 8.42 cm, as shown in Figure 3 on the next
page.

Figure 3. The Corner Pyramid

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Figure 3 shows the corner pyramid in case 1 along with its measurements.
To find the volume of the cuboctahedron using only the corner pyramid as
presented in case one, first you have to find the volume of one of the corner pyramids.
The formula for finding the volume of a pyramid is V = Area of base Height of
pyramid. In this case we used one of the isosceles triangles as the base. To find the
volume of the corner pyramid, we must first find the area of the base. Looking at the
isosceles triangle in Figure 3, we know that the area formula for a triangle is base
height. The base of the triangle is 8.42 cm and the height is 4.22. To find the height of
the isosceles triangle, we cut the original 45 - 45 - 90 triangles into two small 45 - 45
- 90 triangles. By creating two small 45 - 45 - 90 triangles, that made one leg 4.22
cm, which is also the height of the original 45 - 45 - 90 triangle. As for the height ofthe
pyramid, it would be 8.4 cm because when placed on an isosceles triangle as its base,
you can see that the height is 8.4 cm. Now with the area of the base and the height of
the pyramid, the volume of the pyramid can be found. The volume of the corner pyramid
can be seen on the next page in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. Volume of One Corner Pyramid

Figure 4 shows the formula and substitutions for the volume of one of the corner
pyramids.
Because there are eight corner pyramids, when you multiply one corner
pyramids volume by eight, (8 98.784cm3) the total can be subtracted from the total
volume of the original cube found by cubing one side (4741.63cm 3) to get the volume of
the cuboctahedron to be 3951.36cm 3 . The formulas and substitutions for finding the
volume of a cuboctahedron are shown in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5. Volume of the Cuboctahedron.

Figure 5 shows how to find the volume of a cuboctahedron using the corner
pyramids from case 1.
Another way to think of a cuboctahedron is a right square prism with four
rectangular pyramids attached to the lateral faces as presented in case 2. If you look at

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a square face of a cuboctahedron and follow the edges straight down, then cut off the
remainder of the surface, you would get one right square prism on the inside and four
rectangular pyramids that surround it. You can find the volume of the cuboctahedron
with these shapes by finding the volume of the right square prism and adding that to the
volume of the four rectangular pyramids. To find the volume of the right square prism,
you need to use the formula, volume= (Area of the Base)(Height of the prism). In this
case, when finding the area of the right square prisms base, you use the formula, Area=
(base)(height). The net and measurements of the prism are displayed below in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Net of the Inner Prism

Figure 6 shows the net of the inner prism in case 2 along with all of its
measurements.
The bases area, a square face of the rectangular prism, is found by multiplying
the base of the square by its height, which are both 8.42 cm. Therefore, the area of
the base is 141.12 cm. The overall height of the prism is 16.8 cm, because it is the

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same length as the cube itself. The volume of the right square prism would be
2,370.816cm. The substitutions are displayed below in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Volume of a Prism

Figure 7 shows the formula and substitutions to find the volume of the prism.
To find the volume of the pyramids, you use the equation, volume= (Area of
the base)(Height of the prism). Because the base of the pyramid is a rectangle, the
formula for the area is Area= (base)(height). The net for the pyramid along with the
measurements are displayed below in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Net for the Rectangular Pyramid

Figure 8 shows the net for the
rectangular pyramid and its measurements.
The base of the pyramid is the rectangle
so the base is 8.42 cm and the height of it is
16.8 cm. That makes the base equal to 141.122 cm. The height of the pyramid is 4.22

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cm. When you look at Figure 9, the pyramid is outlined in blue. When we drew in an
altitude, the red line, it split that triangle into two 45 - 45 - 90 triangles. So the original
base of that triangle (8.42 cm) was split in half, making one leg of the smaller triangle
4.22 cm. Since both legs are the same measurement in a 45 - 45 - 90 triangle, we
knew that the red line, the height of the triangle, essentially another leg, is 4.22 cm.
The diagram and measurements are shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Height Diagram

Figure 9 demonstrates a visual on how we found the height for the pyramid that
surrounds the inner prism.

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So now that we have all of the numbers, we can plug them into the formula
volume= (Area of the base)(Height of the prism). Once everything is plugged in, the
overall volume of the pyramid is 395.136 cm 3. The substitutions and work are shown
below in Figure 10.

Figure 10. Volume of a Prism

Figure 10 shows the formula and substitutions to find the volume of the pyramid.
The volume comes out to be 395.136 cm3
To find the volume of the cuboctahedron using the inner prism and the
rectangular prisms, first you have to take into account that there are four pyramids and
one prism that make up the cuboctahedron. Since you have four pyramids, you can
multiply the volume of one pyramid (395.136 cm3) by four to get you the volume of all of
the pyramids needed to make the cuboctahedron (1580.54 cm3). You can add the
volumes of all of the pyramids to the rectangular prism (1580.54 + 2370.816 cm3) to get

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the volume of the cuboctahedron (3951.36cm 3). The formulas and substitutions for the
cuboctahedron are shown below in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Volume of a Cuboctahedron from Case 2

Figure 11 shows how to get the volume of a cuboctahedron from case 2.
The last way to think about the cuboctahedron is eight tetrahedrons and six
regular square pyramids all put together. The triangles from the tetrahedron and the
square pyramid have the same measurements as one triangular face of the

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cuboctahedron.

Figure 12. Triangular Face of the Tetrahedrons and Square Pyramids

Figure 12 shows the triangular face and its measurements. The height is found
by using 30 - 60 - 90 special degree triangles. One side of the triangle is 8.42 cm,
making half of the triangle 4.22 cm when the triangle is split into two 30 - 60 - 90
triangles. To find the height of the triangle, half of the full base (4.22 cm) has to be
multiplied by 3, making the height 4.2 6 cm.
To find the volume of a cuboctahedron from case 3, first you need to find the volume of
the tetrahedron. To find the volume of a tetrahedron, you need to use the formula
volume= (area of the base)(height of the pyramid). Now that we have found the

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measurements for the base in Figure 12, we just need to plug the numbers in. Since the
base is a triangle, you would use the formula area= base height. The base for the
triangle is 8.42 cm and the height is 4.2 6 cm. When we plug those numbers into the
formula, (area= 8.42 4.2 6) it simplifies out to be 17.6412 cm. As for the height of
the tetrahedron, we used the Pythagorean Theorem, a 2 + b2 = c2. In this case, a2 would
be 1.46 because you multiply the slant height by . b2 would be the height we are
trying to find, and c2 would be the slant height. This all then simplifies down to 5.63 cm.
The work and substitutions are shown in Figure 13 below.

Figure 13. Height of the Tetrahedron

Figure 13 shows the work used to find the height of the tetrahedron is Case 3.
The height comes out to be 5.63 cm.
With all of this information, we can now find the volume of one tetrahedron. The
formula to find the volume of the tetrahedron is volume= (area of the base)(height of
the pyramid). The area of the base is 17.6412 cm2 and the height is 5.63 cm. Once
this is all plugged in, the volume of one tetrahedron comes out to be 197.568 cm 3. The
work and substitutions are displayed below in Figure 14.

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Figure 14. Volume of One Tetrahedron

Figure 14 shows the work and substitutions to find the volume of one tetrahedron .
To find the volume of one regular square pyramid, you use the formula,
volume= (Area of the base)(Height of the pyramid). The formula used to find the area
of the base is area= (Base)(Height), since the base is one square face of the
cuboctahedron. Because all sides of the cuboctahedron are 8.42 cm, the base is 8.42
cm times 8.42 cm. The final measurement of the base comes out to 141.12 cm . To
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find the height of the pyramid, the Pythagorean Theorem, a 2 + b2 = c2, was used. In this
case a2 would be 4.2 2 cm because that is half of the base of the triangle. b 2 would be
the height we are trying to solve for and c2 would be the slant height of one triangle,
4.26 cm. The substitutions and work for the height can be viewed in in Figure 15

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below.

Figure 15. Height of the Pyramid

Figure 15 shows the formula and substitutions to find the height of the pyramid
with a square base.
Now that we have the height of the pyramid, we can plug in all the values to find
the volume of a square pyramid.

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Figure 16. Volume of One Regular Square Pyramid

Figure 16 shows the formula and substitutions to find the volume of one regular
square pyramid in case 3.
Now that we have the volume for one tetrahedron and one square pyramid, you
can find the volume of the cuboctahedron. Remember, in case 3, the cuboctahedron is
made up of 8 tetrahedrons and 6 square pyramids, so the volume of the tetrahedron
must be multiplied by 8 (8 197.568), to get you 1580.54 cm3. Then the volume of 8
tetrahedrons must be added to the volume of 6 square pyramids, which comes out to be
1370.82 cm3. The work and substitutions for finding the volume of a cuboctahedron from
case 3 is shown below in Figure 17.

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Figure 17. Volume of the Cuboctahedron from Case 3.

Figure 17 shows how to find the volume of the cuboctahedron in case 3.
In conclusion, the cuboctahedron is a very unique, complex solid. It can be
thought of in many ways such as a cube with cut off corners, a right square prism with
four rectangular pyramids on the lateral faces, and even 8 tetrahedrons and 6 regular
pyramids, any of these things can combine to make up a cuboctahedron. Along with
having to think of it in three different ways, many problems can occur. A problem we had
was getting a consistent volume in each case. Each case had a very unique way of
looking at the cuboctahedron, and sometimes its hard to visualize how all the pieces fit
together. In the end, the cuboctahedron is an amazing solid that is fun to explore and
definitely made us think outside, or inside the box.

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