In geometry, an alternation or ''partial truncation'', is an operation on a polygon, polyhedron, tiling, or higher dimensional polytope that removes alternate vertices.Coxeter, Regular polytopes, pp. 154–156 8.6 Partial truncation, or alternation Coxeter labels an ''alternation'' by a prefixed ''h'', standing for ''hemi'' or ''half''. Because alternation reduces all polygon faces to half as many sides, it can only be applied to polytopes with all even-sided faces. An alternated square face becomes a digon, and being degenerate, is usually reduced to a single edge. More generally any vertex-uniform polyhedron or tiling with a vertex configuration consisting of all even-numbered elements can be ''alternated''. For example, the alternation of a vertex figure with ''2a.2b.2c'' is ''a.3.b.3.c.3'' where the three is the number of elements in this vertex figure. A special case is square faces whose order divides in half into degenerate digons. So for example, the cube ''4.4.4'' is alternated as ''2.3.2.3.2.3'' which is reduced to 3.3.3, being the tetrahedron, and all the 6 edges of the tetrahedra can also be seen as the degenerate faces of the original cube.

Snub

A snub (in Coxeter's terminology) can be seen as an alternation of a truncated regular or truncated quasiregular polyhedron. In general a polyhedron can be snubbed if its truncation has only even-sided faces. All truncated rectified polyhedra can be snubbed, not just from regular polyhedra. The

snub square antiprism In geometry, the snub square antiprism is one of the Johnson solids (). It is one of the elementary Johnson solids that do not arise from "cut and paste" manipulations of the Platonic and Archimedean solids, although it is a relative of the i ...

is an example of a general snub, and can be represented by ss, with the square antiprism, s.

Alternated polytopes

This ''alternation'' operation applies to higher-dimensional polytopes and honeycombs as well, but in general most of the results of this operation will not be uniform. The voids created by the deleted vertices will not in general create uniform facets, and there are typically not enough degrees of freedom to allow an appropriate rescaling of the new edges. Exceptions do exist, however, such as the derivation of the snub 24-cell from the truncated 24-cell. Examples: *

Honeycombs A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of hone ...

*# An alternated cubic honeycomb is the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb. *# An alternated hexagonal prismatic honeycomb is the gyrated alternated cubic honeycomb. *

4-polytope In geometry, a 4-polytope (sometimes also called a polychoron, polycell, or polyhedroid) is a four-dimensional polytope. It is a connected and closed figure, composed of lower-dimensional polytopal elements: vertices, edges, faces (polygons), an ...

*# An alternated truncated 24-cell is the snub 24-cell. * 4-honeycombs: *# An alternated truncated 24-cell honeycomb is the snub 24-cell honeycomb. * A

hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1- skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, ...

can always be alternated into a uniform demihypercube. *#

Cube In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross. The cube is the only r ...

→ Tetrahedron (regular) *#* → *# ''Tesseract'' (

8-cell In geometry, a tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eigh ...

) →

16-cell In geometry, the 16-cell is the regular convex 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is one of the six regular convex 4-polytopes first described by the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli in the mi ...

(regular) *#* → *# Penteract → demipenteract (semiregular) *#

Hexeract In geometry, a 6-cube is a six-dimensional hypercube with 64 Vertex (geometry), vertices, 192 Edge (geometry), edges, 240 square Face (geometry), faces, 160 cubic Cell (mathematics), cells, 60 tesseract 4-faces, and 12 5-cube 5-faces. It has Sch ...

→ demihexeract (uniform) *# ...

Altered polyhedra

Coxeter also used the operator ''a'', which contains both halves, so retains the original symmetry. For even-sided regular polyhedra, a represents a

compound polyhedron In geometry, a polyhedral compound is a figure that is composed of several polyhedra sharing a common centre. They are the three-dimensional analogs of polygonal compounds such as the hexagram. The outer vertices of a compound can be connecte ...

with two opposite copies of h. For odd-sided, greater than 3, regular polyhedra a, becomes a star polyhedron. Norman Johnson extended the use of the altered operator ''a'', ''b'' for blended, and ''c'' for converted, as , , and respectively. The compound polyhedron known as the

stellated octahedron The stellated octahedron is the only stellation of the octahedron. It is also called the stella octangula (Latin for "eight-pointed star"), a name given to it by Johannes Kepler in 1609, though it was known to earlier geometers. It was depicte ...

can be represented by a (an altered

cube In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross. The cube is the only r ...

), and ,

. The star polyhedron known as the

small ditrigonal icosidodecahedron In geometry, the small ditrigonal icosidodecahedron (or small ditrigonary icosidodecahedron) is a nonconvex uniform polyhedron, indexed as U30. It has 32 faces (20 triangles and 12 pentagrams), 60 edges, and 20 vertices. It has extended Schläfl ...

can be represented by a (an altered dodecahedron), and , Small ditrigonal icosidodecahedron

. Here all the pentagons have been alternated into pentagrams, and triangles have been inserted to take up the resulting free edges. The star polyhedron known as the

great ditrigonal icosidodecahedron In geometry, the great ditrigonal icosidodecahedron (or great ditrigonary icosidodecahedron) is a nonconvex uniform polyhedron, indexed as U47. It has 32 faces (20 triangles and 12 pentagons), 60 edges, and 20 vertices. It has 4 Schwarz triangle ...

can be represented by a (an altered great stellated dodecahedron), and , Great ditrigonal icosidodecahedron

. Here all the pentagrams have been alternated back into pentagons, and triangles have been inserted to take up the resulting free edges.

Alternate truncations

A similar operation can truncate alternate vertices, rather than just removing them. Below is a set of polyhedra that can be generated from the Catalan solids. These have two types of vertices which can be alternately truncated. Truncating the "higher order" vertices and both vertex types produce these forms:

References

* Coxeter, H.S.M. '' Regular Polytopes'', (3rd edition, 1973), Dover edition, * Norman Johnson ''Uniform Polytopes'', Manuscript (1991) ** N.W. Johnson: ''The Theory of Uniform Polytopes and Honeycombs'', Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1966 * * Richard Klitzing, ''Snubs, alternated facetings, and Stott-Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams'', Symmetry: Culture and Science, Vol. 21, No.4, 329-344, (2010

External links