geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

, the rectified tesseract, rectified 8-cell is a

uniform 4-polytope In geometry, a uniform 4-polytope (or uniform polychoron) is a 4-dimensional polytope which is vertex-transitive and whose cells are uniform polyhedra, and faces are regular polygons. There are 47 non-prismatic convex uniform 4-polytopes. There ...

(4-dimensional

polytope In elementary geometry, a polytope is a geometric object with flat sides (''faces''). Polytopes are the generalization of three-dimensional polyhedra to any number of dimensions. Polytopes may exist in any general number of dimensions as an -d ...

) bounded by 24

cells Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery w ...

: 8

cuboctahedra A cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertex (geometry), vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edge (geometry), edges, each separating a t ...

, and 16

tetrahedra In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the o ...

. It has half the vertices of a

runcinated tesseract In four-dimensional geometry, a runcinated tesseract (or ''runcinated 16-cell'') is a convex uniform 4-polytope, being a runcination (a 3rd order truncation) of the regular tesseract. There are 4 variations of runcinations of the tesseract includi ...

, with its construction, called a runcic tesseract. It has two uniform constructions, as a ''rectified 8-cell'' r and a cantellated demitesseract, rr, the second alternating with two types of tetrahedral cells.

E. L. Elte Emanuel Lodewijk Elte (16 March 1881 in Amsterdam – 9 April 1943 in Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibór) Em ...

identified it in 1912 as a semiregular polytope, labeling it as tC₈.

Construction

The rectified tesseract may be constructed from the

tesseract 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 eig ...

by truncating its vertices at the midpoints of its edges. The

Cartesian coordinates A Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, measured in t ...

of the vertices of the rectified tesseract with edge length 2 is given by all permutations of: :

(0,\ \pm\sqrt,\ \pm\sqrt,\ \pm\sqrt)

Images

Projections

In the cuboctahedron-first parallel projection of the rectified tesseract into 3-dimensional space, the image has the following layout: * The projection envelope is a

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 ...

. * A cuboctahedron is inscribed in this cube, with its vertices lying at the midpoint of the cube's edges. The cuboctahedron is the image of two of the cuboctahedral cells. * The remaining 6 cuboctahedral cells are projected to the square faces of the cube. * The 8 tetrahedral volumes lying at the triangular faces of the central cuboctahedron are the images of the 16 tetrahedral cells, two cells to each image.

Alternative names

*Rit (Jonathan Bowers: for rectified tesseract) *Ambotesseract (

Neil Sloane __NOTOC__ Neil James Alexander Sloane (born October 10, 1939) is a British-American mathematician. His major contributions are in the fields of combinatorics, error-correcting codes, and sphere packing. Sloane is best known for being the creator ...

John Horton Conway John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches ...

) *Rectified tesseract/Runcic tesseract (Norman W. Johnson) **Runcic 4-hypercube/8-cell/octachoron/4-measure polytope/4-regular orthotope **Rectified 4-hypercube/8-cell/octachoron/4-measure polytope/4-regular orthotope

Related uniform polytopes

Runcic cubic polytopes

Tesseract polytopes

References

* H.S.M. Coxeter: ** H.S.M. Coxeter, ''Regular Polytopes'', 3rd Edition, Dover New York, 1973 ** Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995,

*** (Paper 22) H.S.M. Coxeter, ''Regular and Semi Regular Polytopes I'', ath. Zeit. 46 (1940) 380-407, MR 2,10*** (Paper 23) H.S.M. Coxeter, ''Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes II'', ath. Zeit. 188 (1985) 559-591*** (Paper 24) H.S.M. Coxeter, ''Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes III'', ath. Zeit. 200 (1988) 3-45* Norman Johnson ''Uniform Polytopes'', Manuscript (1991) ** N.W. Johnson: ''The Theory of Uniform Polytopes and Honeycombs'', Ph.D. (1966) * * {{Polytopes 4-polytopes