AMS 345/CSE 355 (Spring, 2006) Joe Mitchell

COMPUTATIONAL GEOMETRY
Homework Set # 5 – Solution Notes

(1). O’Rourke, problem 5, section 4.1.6, page 109. Indeed, a “milk carton” provides an example of such
a nonconvex polyhedron. Below, I show 4 nonconvex polyhedra; the left two examples do not satisfy the
requirement that face angles around every vertex sum to at most 2π (verify this by finding a vertex for which
the constraint fails!). The third example is a milk carton, which satisfies the requirement. The rightmost
example is the simplest possible example (in terms of number of vertices – it has only 5) that satisfies the
requirement: a tetrahedron with a face “pushed in” (i.e., take two tetraheda, A and B, both with a common
base face, f , with B ⊂ A; then, we consider the polyhedron A − B).

(2). (a). Assume there exists a 7-edge polyhedron. We will arrive at a contradiction.
Let V be the number of vertices, E = 7 the number of edges, and F the number of faces of the polyhedron.
We know that each vertex of any polyhedron has degree at least 3 (this follows from the definition, since a
vertex must lie at the intersection of 3 or more faces (it takes 3 planes to determine a point)). Thus, the
sum of the vertex degrees, which equals 2E = 14, is at least 3V : 14 ≥ 3V (which implies that the integer V
must be at most 4). But the inequality E ≤ 3V − 6 (which holds for planar graphs) implies that 7 ≤ 3V − 6,
so 13 ≤ 3V , which contradicts the fact that 14 ≥ 3V . Thus, a polyhedron with E = 7 cannot exist.
(b). Is there a polyhedron with exactly 8 edges? Justify! (draw one, or argue that none exists) Yes, there
are polyhedra with exactly 8 edges; as shown below (left), a square-based pyramid is such an example. In
fact, if you think about it you should be able to argue that any 8-edge polyhedron has this structure: 4 faces
that are triangles and one face that is a quadrilateral.
(c). Is there a polyhedron with exactly 9 edges? Justify! (draw one, or argue that none exists) Yes, there
are polyhedra with exactly 9 edges; as shown below (middle and right).

(3). Describe in words and draw figures for the Voronoi diagram (in blue) and Delaunay diagram (in red)
for each of the following sets of points.
(a). 6 points all lying on a common circle (at arbitrary positions on the circle) The Delaunay diagram is a
cycle. The Voronoi diagram consists of 6 Voronoi edges that are (open) rays, all sharing a common endpoint
at the single Voronoi vertex, cutting the plane into 6 “pie-shaped” cones that are the (open) Voronoi cells.
Each ray is a subset of the line that is the perpendicular bisector between two consecutive sites around the
circle.
(b). The 12 integer grid points {(i, j) : i ∈ {0, 1, 2}, j ∈ {0, 1, 2, 3}}. See the figure.
 (c). 7 points all lying on a common line (at arbitrary positions on the line) There are no Voronoi vertices.
There are 6 Voronoi edges, each an infinite line orthogonal to the line ` on which the sites lie. The Delaunay
diagram consists of a path of 6 edges linking the sites along the line `.

(4). O’Rourke, problem 1, section 4.4.4, page 149. We are given a vertex v and a winged edge data structure.
Vertex v points to an edge, e, that is incident on v. Let E1 = e be the first edge that we print. Let i = 1. We
look at the v0 pointer (v0 (Ei )) for Ei . If v0 = v then we set Ei+1 = e+ +
0 (Ei ); otherwise, we set Ei+1 = e1 (Ei ).
In either case, we get Ei+1 as the edge that is next in the clockwise order about v. We then set i = i + 1
and continue around v until we get back to the original edge e (i.e., until Ei + 1 = e).
(5). O’Rourke, problem 4, section 5.3.3, page 164. Justify (at least briefly) why your set of points has the
claimed property!
Let S = {(0, 1), (0, 0), (1, 0), (2, 0), . . . , (n − 1, 0)} be a set of n points in the plane. We claim that the
Delaunay diagram for S includes n − 1 edges incident on (0, 1): each edge ((0, 1), (i, 0)) is Delaunay for
i = 0, 1, . . . , n − 1. To see this, it suffices to show that there is a site-free circle through each such pair; this
is evident by selecting a circle with center having x-coordinate equal to i, of the appropriate radius to pass
through (0, 1) while being tangent to the x-axis at the point (i, 0).
(Many other examples have the required property too.)
(6). Let S be the set of points {(-1,-1), (3,-1), (4,-1), (1,1), (5,1), (6,1), (3,3), (4,3), 6,3)}. Construct and
draw the Delaunay diagram (in red) and the Voronoi diagram (in blue). (We assume the usual Euclidean
metric.)