Rhombic Pyramidal Honeycomb
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The rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb (also dodecahedrille) is a space-filling
tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...
(or
honeycomb 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 honey ...
) in Euclidean 3-space. It is the
Voronoi diagram In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. In the simplest case, these objects are just finitely many points in the plane (called seeds, sites, or generators). For each seed ...
of the
face-centered cubic In crystallography, the cubic (or isometric) crystal system is a crystal system where the unit cell is in the shape of a cube. This is one of the most common and simplest shapes found in crystals and minerals. There are three main varieties of ...
sphere-packing, which has the densest possible packing of equal spheres in ordinary space (see
Kepler conjecture The Kepler conjecture, named after the 17th-century mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, is a mathematical theorem about sphere packing in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It states that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling s ...
).


Geometry

It consists of copies of a single
cell 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 ...
, the
rhombic dodecahedron In geometry, the rhombic dodecahedron is a convex polyhedron with 12 congruent rhombic faces. It has 24 edges, and 14 vertices of 2 types. It is a Catalan solid, and the dual polyhedron of the cuboctahedron. Properties The rhombic dodecahed ...
. All faces are
rhombi In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (plural rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The ...
, with diagonals in the ratio 1:. Three cells meet at each edge. The honeycomb is thus
cell-transitive In geometry, a tessellation of dimension (a plane tiling) or higher, or a polytope of dimension (a polyhedron) or higher, is isohedral or face-transitive if all its faces are the same. More specifically, all faces must be not merely congrue ...
,
face-transitive In geometry, a tessellation of dimension (a plane tiling) or higher, or a polytope of dimension (a polyhedron) or higher, is isohedral or face-transitive if all its faces are the same. More specifically, all faces must be not merely congrue ...
, and
edge-transitive In geometry, a polytope (for example, a polygon or a polyhedron) or a tiling is isotoxal () or edge-transitive if its symmetries act transitively on its edges. Informally, this means that there is only one type of edge to the object: given t ...
; but it is not
vertex-transitive In geometry, a polytope (e.g. a polygon or polyhedron) or a tiling is isogonal or vertex-transitive if all its vertices are equivalent under the symmetries of the figure. This implies that each vertex is surrounded by the same kinds of face in ...
, as it has two kinds of vertex. The vertices with the obtuse rhombic face angles have 4 cells. The vertices with the acute rhombic face angles have 6 cells. The rhombic dodecahedron can be twisted on one of its hexagonal cross-sections to form a
trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron In geometry, the trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron or rhombo-trapezoidal dodecahedron is a convex dodecahedron with 6 rhombic and 6 trapezoidal faces. It has symmetry. A concave form can be constructed with an identical net, seen as excavating tri ...
, which is the cell of a somewhat similar tessellation, the
Voronoi diagram In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. In the simplest case, these objects are just finitely many points in the plane (called seeds, sites, or generators). For each seed ...
of hexagonal
close-packing In geometry, close-packing of equal spheres is a dense arrangement of congruent spheres in an infinite, regular arrangement (or lattice). Carl Friedrich Gauss proved that the highest average density – that is, the greatest fraction of space occu ...
.


Colorings

Cells can be given 4 colors in square layers of 2-colors where neighboring cells have different colors, and 6 colors in hexagonal layers of 3 colors where same-colored cells have no contact at all.


Related honeycombs

The ''rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb'' can be dissected into a
trigonal trapezohedral honeycomb In geometry, the trigonal trapezohedral honeycomb is a uniform space-filling tessellation (or honeycomb) in Euclidean 3-space. Cells are identical trigonal trapezohedra or rhombohedra. Conway, Burgiel, and Goodman-Strauss call it an oblate cubil ...
with each rhombic dodecahedron dissected into 4
trigonal trapezohedron In geometry, a trigonal trapezohedron is a rhombohedron (a polyhedron with six rhombus-shaped faces) in which, additionally, all six faces are congruent. Alternative names for the same shape are the ''trigonal deltohedron'' or ''isohedral rhomboh ...
s. Each rhombic dodecahedra can also be dissected with a center point into 12 rhombic pyramids of the rhombic pyramidal honeycomb.


Trapezo-rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb

The trapezo-rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb is a space-filling
tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...
(or
honeycomb 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 honey ...
) in Euclidean 3-space. It consists of copies of a single cell, the
trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron In geometry, the trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron or rhombo-trapezoidal dodecahedron is a convex dodecahedron with 6 rhombic and 6 trapezoidal faces. It has symmetry. A concave form can be constructed with an identical net, seen as excavating tri ...
. It is similar to the higher symmetric rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb which has all 12 faces as rhombi. :


Related honeycombs

It is a dual to the
vertex-transitive In geometry, a polytope (e.g. a polygon or polyhedron) or a tiling is isogonal or vertex-transitive if all its vertices are equivalent under the symmetries of the figure. This implies that each vertex is surrounded by the same kinds of face in ...
gyrated tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb is a quasiregular space-filling tessellation (or honeycomb) in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of alternating regular octahedra and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:2. Other names in ...
. :


Rhombic pyramidal honeycomb

The rhombic pyramidal honeycomb or half oblate octahedrille is a uniform space-filling
tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...
(or
honeycomb 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 honey ...
) in Euclidean 3-space. This honeycomb can be seen as a rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb, with the
rhombic dodecahedra Rhombic may refer to: *Rhombus, a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length (often called a diamond) *Rhombic antenna, a broadband directional antenna most commonly used on shortwave frequencies * polyhedra formed from rhombuses, such ...
dissected Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause ...
with its center into 12 rhombic pyramids.


Related honeycombs

It is dual to the cantic cubic honeycomb: :


See also

*
Architectonic and catoptric tessellation In geometry, John Horton Conway defines architectonic and catoptric tessellations as the uniform tessellations (or honeycombs) of Euclidean 3-space with prime space groups and their duals, as three-dimensional analogue of the Platonic, Archime ...


References

*


External links

* {{Mathworld , urlname = Space-FillingPolyhedron , title = Space-filling polyhedron
Examples of Housing Construction using this geometry
Honeycombs (geometry)