A polyhedral compound is a polyhedron that is itself composed of several other polyhedra sharing a common centre.

They are the three-dimensional analogs of polygonal compounds such as the hexagram. Neighbouring vertices of a compound can be connected to form a convex polyhedron called the convex hull. The compound is a facetting of the convex hull. Another convex polyhedron is formed by the small central space common to all members of the compound. This polyhedron can be considered the core for a set of stellations including this compound. (See List of Wenninger polyhedron models for these compounds and more stellations.)

Contents
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1 Regular compounds 2 Dual-regular compounds 3 Uniform compounds 4 Group theory 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Regular compounds

A regular polyhedron compound can be defined as a compound which, like a regular polyhedron, is vertex-transitive, edge-transitive, and face-transitive. With this definition there are 5 regular compounds. Components Compound of two tetrahedra, or Stella octangula Compound of five tetrahedra, or Chiroicosahedron Compound of ten tetrahedra, or Icosiicosahedron Compound of five cubes, or Rhombihedron Compound of five Picture Convex hull Cube Core Octahedron Symmetry Oh Dual Self-dual enantiomorph, or chiral twin Self-dual Compound of five octahedra Compound of

Dodecahedron

Icosahedron

Dodecahedron

Icosahedron Rhombic triacontahedron

Ih

Dodecahedron

Ih Ih

Icosidodecahedron Icosahedron

octahedra, or Small icosiicosahedron

five cubes

Best known is the compound of two tetrahedra, often called the stella octangula, a name given to it by Kepler. The vertices of the two tetrahedra define a cube and the intersection of the two an octahedron, which shares the same face-planes as the compound. Thus it is a stellation of the octahedron, and in fact, the only finite stellation thereof. The stella octangula can also be regarded as a dual-regular compound. The compound of five tetrahedra comes in two enantiomorphic versions, which together make up the compound of 10 tetrahedra. Each of the tetrahedral compounds is self-dual, and the compound of 5 cubes is dual to the compound of 5 octahedra.

[edit] Dual-regular compounds

A dual-regular compound is composed of a regular polyhedron (one of the Platonic solids or Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra) and its regular dual, arranged reciprocally about a common intersphere or midsphere, such that the edge of one polyhedron intersects the dual edge of the dual polyhedron. There are five such compounds. Components Compound of two tetrahedra, or Stella octangula Compound of cube and octahedron Compound of dodecahedron and icosahedron Compound of great icosahedron and great stellated dodecahedron Compound of small stellated dodecahedron and great dodecahedron Picture Convex hull Cube Rhombic dodecahedron Rhombic triacontahedron Dodecahedron Icosahedron Core Octahedron Cuboctahedron Icosidodecahedron Icosahedron Dodecahedron Symmetry Oh Oh Ih Ih Ih

The dual-regular compound of a tetrahedron with its dual polyhedron is also the regular Stella octangula, since the tetrahedron is self-dual. The cube-octahedron and dodecahedron-icosahedron dual-regular compounds are the first stellations of the cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron, respectively. The compound of the small stellated dodecahedron and great dodecahedron looks outwardly the same as the small stellated dodecahedron, because the great dodecahedron is completely contained inside. For this reason, the image shown above shows the small stellated dodecahedron in wireframe.

[edit] Uniform compounds

Main article: Uniform polyhedron compound In 1976 John Skilling published Uniform Compounds of Uniform Polyhedra which enumerated 75 compounds (including 6 as infinite prismatic sets of compounds, #20-#25) made from uniform polyhedra with rotational symmetry. (Every vertex is vertex-transitive and every vertex is transitive with every other vertex.) This list includes the five regular compounds above. [1] Here is a pictorial table of the 75 uniform compounds as listed by Skilling. Most are singularly colored by each polyhedron element. Some as chiral pairs are colored by symmetry of the faces within each polyhedron.
y

1-19: Miscellaneous (4,5,6,9,17 are the 5 regular compounds)

20-25: Prism symmetry embedded in prism symmetry,

26-45: Prism symmetry embedded in octahedral or icosahedral symmetry,

46-67: Tetrahedral symmetry embedded in octahedral or icosahedral symmetry,

68-75: enantiomorph pairs

Two polyhedra that are compounds but have their elements rigidly locked into place are the small complex icosidodecahedron (compound of icosahedron and great dodecahedron) and the great complex icosidodecahedron (compound of small stellated dodecahedron and great icosahedron). If the definition of a uniform polyhedron is generalised they are uniform

Polyhedron

The word polyhedron has slightly different meanings in geometry and algebraic geometry. In geometry, a polyhedron is simply a three-dimensional solid which consists of a collection of polygons, usually joined at their edges. The word derives from the Greek poly (many) plus the Indo-European hedron (seat). A polyhedron is the three-dimensional version of the more general polytope (in the geometric sense), which can be defined in arbitrary dimension. The plural of polyhedron is "polyhedra" (or sometimes "polyhedrons").

The term "polyhedron" is used somewhat differently in algebraic topology, where it is defined as a space that can be built from such "building blocks" as line segments, triangles, tetrahedra, and their higher dimensional analogs by "gluing them together" along their faces (Munkres 1993, p. 2). More specifically, it can be defined as the underlying space of a simplicial complex (with the additional constraint sometimes imposed that the complex be finite; Munkres 1993, p. 9). In the usual definition, a polyhedron can be viewed as an intersection of half-spaces, while a polytope is a bounded polyhedron.

A convex polyhedron can be formally defined as the set of solutions to a system of linear inequalities

where

is a real

matrix and

is a real -vector. Although usage varies, most authors additionally require that a

solution be bounded for it to define a convex polyhedron. An example of a convex polyhedron is illustrated above.

The following table lists the name given to a polyhedron having

faces for small

. When used without qualification

for polyhedron for which symmetric forms exist, the term may mean this particular polyhedron or may mean a arbitrary -faced polyhedron, depending on context.

polyhedron

4 tetrahedron

5 pentahedron

6 hexahedron

7 heptahedron

8 octahedron

9 nonahedron

10 decahedron

11 undecahedron

12 dodecahedron

14 tetradecahedron

20 icosahedron

24 icositetrahedron

30 triacontahedron

32 icosidodecahedron

60 hexecontahedron

90 enneacontahedron

A polyhedron is said to be regular if its faces and vertex figures are regular (not necessarily convex) polygons (Coxeter 1973, p. 16). Using this definition, there are a total of nine regular polyhedra, five being the convex Platonic solids and four being the concave (stellated) Kepler-Poinsot solids. However, the term "regular polyhedra" is sometimes used to refer exclusively to the Platonic solids (Cromwell 1997, p. 53). The dual polyhedra of the Platonic solids are not new polyhedra, but are themselves Platonic solids.

A convex polyhedron is called semiregular if its faces have a similar arrangement of nonintersecting regular planar convex polygons of two or more different types about each polyhedron vertex (Holden 1991, p. 41). These solids are more commonly called the Archimedean solids, and there are 13 of them. The dual polyhedra of the Archimedean solids are 13 new (and beautiful) solids, sometimes called the Catalan solids.

A quasiregular polyhedron is the solid region interior to two dual regular polyhedra (Coxeter 1973, pp. 17-20). There are only two convex quasiregular polyhedra: the cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron. There are also infinite families of prisms and antiprisms.

There exist exactly 92 convex polyhedra with regular polygonal faces (and not necessarily equivalent vertices). They are known as the Johnson solids. Polyhedra with identical polyhedron vertices related by a symmetry operation are known as uniform polyhedra. There are 75 such polyhedra in which only two faces may meet at an polyhedron edge, and 76 in which any even number of faces may meet. Of these, 37 were discovered by Badoureau in 1881 and 12 by Coxeter and Miller ca. 1930.

Polyhedra can be superposed on each other (with the sides allowed to pass through each other) to yield additional polyhedron compounds. Those made from regular polyhedra have symmetries which are especially aesthetically pleasing. The graphs corresponding to polyhedra skeletons are called Schlegel graphs.