Spherical polyhedron
In geometry, a spherical polyhedron or spherical tiling is a tiling of the sphere in which the surface is divided or partitioned by great arcs into bounded regions called spherical polygons. A polyhedron whose vertices are equidistant from its center can be conveniently studied by projecting its edges onto the sphere to obtain a corresponding spherical polyhedron. The most familiar spherical polyhedron is the soccer ball, thought of as a spherical truncated icosahedron. The next most popular spherical polyhedron is the beach ball, thought of as a hosohedron. Some "improper" polyhedra, such as hosohedra and their duals, dihedra, exist as spherical polyhedra, but their flat-faced analogs are degenerate. The example hexagonal beach ball, {2, 6}, is a hosohedron, and {6, 2} is its dual dihedron.
History
During the 10th Century, the Islamic scholar Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (Abu'l Wafa) studied spherical polyhedra as part of a work on the geometry needed by craftspeople and architects.[1] The work of Buckminster Fuller on geodesic domes in the mid 20th century triggered a boom in the study of spherical polyhedra.[2] At roughly the same time, Coxeter used them to enumerate all but one of the uniform polyhedra, through the construction of kaleidoscopes (Wythoff construction).[3]
Examples
All regular polyhedra, semiregular polyhedra, and their duals can be projected onto the sphere as tilings:
Improper cases
Spherical tilings allow cases that polyhedra do not, namely hosohedra: figures as {2,n}, and dihedra: figures as {n,2}. Generally, regular hosohedra and regular dihedra are used.
Relation to tilings of the projective plane
Spherical polyhedra having at least one inversive symmetry are related to projective polyhedra[4] (tessellations of the real projective plane) – just as the sphere has a 2-to-1 covering map of the projective plane, projective polyhedra correspond under 2-fold cover to spherical polyhedra that are symmetric under reflection through the origin. The best-known examples of projective polyhedra are the regular projective polyhedra, the quotients of the centrally symmetric Platonic solids, as well as two infinite classes of even dihedra and hosohedra:[5]
- Hemi-cube, {4,3}/2
- Hemi-octahedron, {3,4}/2
- Hemi-dodecahedron, {5,3}/2
- Hemi-icosahedron, {3,5}/2
- Hemi-dihedron, {2p,2}/2, p>=1
- Hemi-hosohedron, {2,2p}/2, p>=1
See also
- Spherical geometry
- Spherical trigonometry
- Polyhedron
- Projective polyhedron
- Toroidal polyhedron
- Conway polyhedron notation
References
- ↑ Sarhangi, Reza (September 2008). "Illustrating Abu al-Wafā' Būzjānī: Flat images, spherical constructions". Iranian Studies. 41 (4): 511–523. doi:10.1080/00210860802246184.
- ↑ Popko, Edward S. (2012). Divided Spheres: Geodesics and the Orderly Subdivision of the Sphere. CRC Press. p. xix. ISBN 978-1-4665-0430-1.
Buckminster Fuller's invention of the geodesic dome was the biggest stimulus for spherical subdivision research and development.
- ↑ Coxeter, H.S.M.; Longuet-Higgins, M.S.; Miller, J.C.P. (1954). "Uniform polyhedra". Phil. Trans. 246 A (916): 401–50. JSTOR 91532.
- ↑ McMullen, Peter; Schulte, Egon (2002). "6C. Projective Regular Polytopes". Abstract Regular Polytopes. Cambridge University Press. pp. 162–5. ISBN 0-521-81496-0.
- ↑ Coxeter, H.S.M. (1969). "§21.3 Regular maps'". Introduction to Geometry (2nd ed.). Wiley. pp. 386–8. ISBN 978-0-471-50458-0. MR 0123930.
