Platonic solid

In three-dimensional space, a Platonic solid is a regular, convex polyhedron. It is constructed by congruent (identical in shape
and size), regular (all angles equal and all sides equal), polygonal faces with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex.
Five solids meet these criteria:

Tetrahedron Cube Octahedron Dodecahedron Icosahedron

Four faces Six faces Eight faces Twelve faces Twenty faces

(Animation) (Animation) (Animation) (Animation) (Animation)

(3D model) (3D model) (3D model) (3D model) (3D model)

Geometers have studied the Platonic solids for thousands of years.[1] They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato
who hypothesized in one of his dialogues, the Timaeus, that the classical elements were made of these regular solids.[2]

Contents
History
Cartesian coordinates
Combinatorial properties
As a configuration
Classification
Geometric proof
Topological proof
Geometric properties
Angles
Radii, area, and volume
Rupert property
Symmetry
Dual polyhedra
Symmetry groups
In nature and technology
Liquid crystals with symmetries of Platonic solids
Related polyhedra and polytopes
Uniform polyhedra
Regular tessellations
Higher dimensions
See also
References
Sources
External links

History
The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. It has been suggested that
certain carved stone balls created by the late Neolithic people of Scotland
represent these shapes; however, these balls have rounded knobs rather than being
polyhedral, the numbers of knobs frequently differed from the numbers of vertices
of the Platonic solids, there is no ball whose knobs match the 20 vertices of the
dodecahedron, and the arrangement of the knobs was not always symmetric.[3]

The ancient Greeks studied the Platonic solids extensively. Some sources (such as
Proclus) credit Pythagoras with their discovery. Other evidence suggests that he
may have only been familiar with the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron and
that the discovery of the octahedron and icosahedron belong to Theaetetus, a
contemporary of Plato. In any case, Theaetetus gave a mathematical description of
all five and may have been responsible for the first known proof that no other
convex regular polyhedra exist.

The Platonic solids are prominent in the philosophy of Plato, their namesake. Plato
wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each
Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar
of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth
System from Mysterium Cosmographicum
was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron,
(1596)
and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these
associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and
stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made
of the octahedron; its minuscule components
are so smooth that one can barely feel it.
Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's
hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny
little balls. By contrast, a highly nonspherical
solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents Assignment to the elements in Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum
"earth". These clumsy little solids cause dirt
to crumble and break when picked up in stark
difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the cube's being the only regular solid that tessellates Euclidean space was
believed to cause the solidity of the Earth.

Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, "...the god used [it] for arranging the constellations on
the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithēr (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens
were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.[4]

Euclid completely mathematically described the Platonic solids in the Elements, the last book (Book XIII) of which is devoted
to their properties. Propositions 13–17 in Book XIII describe the construction of the tetrahedron, octahedron, cube,
icosahedron, and dodecahedron in that order. For each solid Euclid finds the ratio of the diameter of the circumscribed sphere
to the edge length. In Proposition 18 he argues that there are no further convex regular polyhedra. Andreas Speiser has
advocated the view that the construction of the 5 regular solids is the chief goal of the deductive system canonized in the
Elements.[5] Much of the information in Book XIII is probably derived from the work of Theaetetus.

In the 16th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler attempted to relate the five extraterrestrial planets known at that
time to the five Platonic solids. In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler proposed a model of the Solar
System in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres.
Kepler proposed that the distance relationships between the six planets known at that time could be understood in terms of the
five Platonic solids enclosed within a sphere that represented the orbit of Saturn. The six spheres each corresponded to one of
the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the
octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube, thereby dictating the structure of the
solar system and the distance relationships between the planets by the Platonic solids. In the end, Kepler's original idea had to
be abandoned, but out of his research came his three laws of orbital dynamics, the first of which was that the orbits of planets
are ellipses rather than circles, changing the course of physics and astronomy. He also discovered the Kepler solids.

In the 20th century, attempts to link Platonic solids to the physical world were expanded to the electron shell model in
chemistry by Robert Moon in a theory known as the "Moon model".[6]

Cartesian coordinates
For Platonic solids centered at the origin, simple Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are given below. The Greek letter φ is
used to represent the golden ratio 1 +2√5 ≈ 1.6180.

Parameters
Figure Tetrahedron Octahedron Cube Icosahedron Dodecahedron
Faces 4 8 6 20 12
Vertices 4 6 (2 × 3) 8 12 (4 × 3) 20 (8 + 4 × 3)
Orientation
1 2 1 2 1 2
set
Vertex (1, 1, 1) (−1, −1, −1) (±1, ±1, ±1) (±1, ±1, ±1) (±1, ±1, ±1)
Coordinates (1, −1, −1) (−1, 1, 1) (±1, 0, 0) (0, ±1, ±φ) (0, ±φ, ±1) 1 1
(0, ± φ , ±φ) (0, ±φ, ± φ )
(−1, 1, −1) (1, −1, 1) (0, ±1, 0) (±1, ±φ, 0) (±φ, ±1, 0) 1 1
(−1, −1, 1) (1, 1, −1) (0, 0, ±1) (±φ, 0, ±1) (±1, 0, ±φ) (± φ , ±φ, 0) (±φ, ± φ , 0)
1 1
(±φ, 0, ± φ ) (± φ , 0, ±φ)

Image

The coordinates for the tetrahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron are given in two orientation sets, each containing half of
the sign and position permutation of coordinates.

These coordinates reveal certain relationships between the Platonic solids: the vertices of the tetrahedron represent half of
those of the cube, as {4,3} or , one of two sets of 4 vertices in dual positions, as h{4,3} or . Both tetrahedral positions
make the compound stellated octahedron.

The coordinates of the icosahedron are related to two alternated sets of coordinates of a nonuniform truncated octahedron,
t{3,4} or , also called a snub octahedron, as s{3,4} or , and seen in the compound of two icosahedra.

Eight of the vertices of the dodecahedron are shared with the cube. Completing all orientations leads to the compound of five
cubes.

Combinatorial properties
A convex polyhedron is a Platonic solid if and only if

1. all its faces are congruent convex regular polygons,

2. none of its faces intersect except at their edges, and
3. the same number of faces meet at each of its vertices.

Each Platonic solid can therefore be denoted by a symbol {p, q} where

p is the number of edges (or, equivalently, vertices) of each face, and

q is the number of faces (or, equivalently, edges) that meet at each vertex.

The symbol {p, q}, called the Schläfli symbol, gives a combinatorial description of the polyhedron. The Schläfli symbols of
the five Platonic solids are given in the table below.
 Polyhedron Vertices Edges Faces Schläfli symbol Vertex configuration

tetrahedron 4 6 4 {3, 3} 3.3.3

cube 8 12 6 {4, 3} 4.4.4

octahedron 6 12 8 {3, 4} 3.3.3.3

dodecahedron 20 30 12 {5, 3} 5.5.5

icosahedron 12 30 20 {3, 5} 3.3.3.3.3

All other combinatorial information about these solids, such as total number of vertices
(V), edges (E), and faces (F), can be determined from p and q. Since any edge joins two
vertices and has two adjacent faces we must have:

The other relationship between these values is given by Euler's formula:

This can be proved in many ways. Together these three relationships completely
determine V, E, and F:
One possible Hamiltonian cycle
through every vertex of a
dodecahedron is shown in red –
like all platonic solids, the
dodecahedron is Hamiltonian

The above as a two-dimensional

planar graph

Swapping p and q interchanges F and V while leaving E unchanged. For a geometric interpretation of this property, see § Dual
polyhedra below.

As a configuration
The elements of a polyhedron can be expressed in a configuration matrix. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges,
and faces. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole polyhedron. The nondiagonal numbers say
how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element. Dual pairs of polyhedra have their configuration matrices
rotated 180 degrees from each other.[7]

{p,q} Platonic configurations

group order: g=24 g=48 g=120
g = 8pq/(4-(p-2)(q-2))

v e f {3,3} {3,4} {4,3} {3,5} {5,3}

v g/2q q q 4 3 3 6 4 4 8 3 3 12 5 5 20 3 3

e 2 g/4 2 2 6 2 2 12 2 2 12 2 2 30 2 2 30 2

f p p g/2p 3 3 4 3 3 8 4 4 6 3 3 20 5 5 12

Classification
The classical result is that only five convex regular polyhedra exist. Two common arguments below demonstrate no more than
five Platonic solids can exist, but positively demonstrating the existence of any given solid is a separate question—one that
requires an explicit construction.

Geometric proof

The following geometric argument is very similar to the one given Polygon nets around a vertex
by Euclid in the Elements:

1. Each vertex of the solid must be a vertex for at least

three faces.
2. At each vertex of the solid, the total, among the adjacent {3,3} {3,4} {3,5} {3,6}
faces, of the angles between their respective adjacent Defect 180° Defect 120° Defect 60° Defect 0°
sides must be less than 360°. The amount less than
360° is called an angle defect.
3. The angles at all vertices of all faces of a Platonic solid
are identical: each vertex of each face must contribute
less than 360°
3
= 120°. {4,3} {4,4} {5,3} {6,3}
4. Regular polygons of six or more sides have only angles Defect 90° Defect 0° Defect 36° Defect 0°
of 120° or more, so the common face must be the A vertex needs at least 3 faces, and an angle defect.
triangle, square, or pentagon. For these different shapes A 0° angle defect will fill the Euclidean plane with a regular tiling.
of faces the following holds: By Descartes' theorem, the number of vertices is 720°/defect.

Triangular faces: Each vertex of a regular triangle is

60°, so a shape may have 3, 4, or 5 triangles meeting at a vertex; these are the tetrahedron, octahedron,
and icosahedron respectively.
Square faces: Each vertex of a square is 90°, so there is only one arrangement possible with three faces at
a vertex, the cube.
Pentagonal faces: Each vertex is 108°; again, only one arrangement of three faces at a vertex is possible,
the dodecahedron.

Altogether this makes 5 possible Platonic solids.

Topological proof

A purely topological proof can be made using only combinatorial information about the solids. The key is Euler's observation
that V − E + F = 2, and the fact that pF = 2E = qV, where p stands for the number of edges of each face and q for the number of
edges meeting at each vertex. Combining these equations one obtains the equation
Simple algebraic manipulation then gives

Since E is strictly positive we must have

Using the fact that p and q must both be at least 3, one can easily see that there are only five possibilities for {p, q}:

{3, 3}, {4, 3}, {3, 4}, {5, 3}, {3, 5}.

Geometric properties

Angles

There are a number of angles associated with each Platonic solid. The dihedral angle is the interior angle between any two face
planes. The dihedral angle, θ, of the solid {p,q} is given by the formula

This is sometimes more conveniently expressed in terms of the tangent by

The quantity h (called the Coxeter number) is 4, 6, 6, 10, and 10 for the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and
icosahedron respectively.

The angular deficiency at the vertex of a polyhedron is the difference between the sum of the face-angles at that vertex and 2π.
The defect, δ, at any vertex of the Platonic solids {p,q} is

By a theorem of Descartes, this is equal to 4π divided by the number of vertices (i.e. the total defect at all vertices is 4π).

The 3-dimensional analog of a plane angle is a solid angle. The solid angle, Ω, at the vertex of a Platonic solid is given in terms
of the dihedral angle by

This follows from the spherical excess formula for a spherical polygon and the fact that the vertex figure of the polyhedron
{p,q} is a regular q-gon.

The solid angle of a face subtended from the center of a platonic solid is equal to the solid angle of a full sphere (4π steradians)
divided by the number of faces. This is equal to the angular deficiency of its dual.

The various angles associated with the Platonic solids are tabulated below. The numerical values of the solid angles are given
in steradians. The constant φ = 1 +2√5 is the golden ratio.
 Dihedral angle tan θ2 Face
Polyhedron Defect (δ) Vertex solid angle (Ω)
(θ) solid angle

tetrahedron 70.53°

cube 90°

octahedron 109.47°

dodecahedron 116.57°

icosahedron 138.19°

Radii, area, and volume

Another virtue of regularity is that the Platonic solids all possess three concentric spheres:

the circumscribed sphere that passes through all the vertices,

the midsphere that is tangent to each edge at the midpoint of the edge, and
the inscribed sphere that is tangent to each face at the center of the face.

The radii of these spheres are called the circumradius, the midradius, and the inradius. These are the distances from the center
of the polyhedron to the vertices, edge midpoints, and face centers respectively. The circumradius R and the inradius r of the
solid {p, q} with edge length a are given by

where θ is the dihedral angle. The midradius ρ is given by

where h is the quantity used above in the definition of the dihedral angle (h = 4, 6, 6, 10, or 10). The ratio of the circumradius
to the inradius is symmetric in p and q:

The surface area, A, of a Platonic solid {p, q} is easily computed as area of a regular p-gon times the number of faces F. This
is:

The volume is computed as F times the volume of the pyramid whose base is a regular p-gon and whose height is the inradius
r. That is,

The following table lists the various radii of the Platonic solids together with their surface area and volume. The overall size is
fixed by taking the edge length, a, to be equal to 2.
 Polyhedron Volume
Inradius (r) Midradius (ρ) Circumradius (R) Surface area (A) Volume (V)
(a = 2) (unit edges)

tetrahedron

cube

octahedron

dodecahedron

icosahedron

The constants φ and ξ in the above are given by

Among the Platonic solids, either the dodecahedron or the icosahedron may be seen as the best approximation to the sphere.
The icosahedron has the largest number of faces and the largest dihedral angle, it hugs its inscribed sphere the most tightly, and
its surface area to volume ratio is closest to that of a sphere of the same size (i.e. either the same surface area or the same
volume.) The dodecahedron, on the other hand, has the smallest angular defect, the largest vertex solid angle, and it fills out its
circumscribed sphere the most.

Rupert property

A polyhedron P is said to have the Rupert property if a polyhedron of the same or larger size and the same shape as P can pass
through a hole in P.[8] All five Platonic solids have this property.[8][9][10]

Symmetry

Dual polyhedra

Every polyhedron has a dual (or "polar") polyhedron with faces and vertices interchanged. The dual of every Platonic solid
is another Platonic solid, so that we can arrange the five solids into dual pairs.

The tetrahedron is self-dual (i.e. its dual is another tetrahedron).

The cube and the octahedron form a dual pair.
The dodecahedron and the icosahedron form a dual pair.

If a polyhedron has Schläfli symbol {p, q}, then its dual has the symbol {q, p}. Indeed, every combinatorial property of one
Platonic solid can be interpreted as another combinatorial property of the dual.

One can construct the dual polyhedron by taking the vertices of the dual to be the centers of the faces of the original figure.
Connecting the centers of adjacent faces in the original forms the edges of the dual and thereby interchanges the number of
faces and vertices while maintaining the number of edges.

More generally, one can dualize a Platonic solid with respect to a sphere of radius d concentric with the solid. The radii
(R, ρ, r) of a solid and those of its dual (R*, ρ*, r*) are related by

Dualizing with respect to the midsphere (d = ρ) is often convenient because the midsphere has the same relationship to both
polyhedra. Taking d2 = Rr yields a dual solid with the same circumradius and inradius (i.e. R* = R and r* = r).
Symmetry groups

In mathematics, the concept of symmetry is studied with the notion of a mathematical group.
Every polyhedron has an associated symmetry group, which is the set of all transformations
(Euclidean isometries) which leave the polyhedron invariant. The order of the symmetry group is
the number of symmetries of the polyhedron. One often distinguishes between the full symmetry
group, which includes reflections, and the proper symmetry group, which includes only rotations.

The symmetry groups of the Platonic solids are a special class of three-dimensional point groups
known as polyhedral groups. The high degree of symmetry of the Platonic solids can be
interpreted in a number of ways. Most importantly, the vertices of each solid are all equivalent
under the action of the symmetry group, as are the edges and faces. One says the action of the
symmetry group is transitive on the vertices, edges, and faces. In fact, this is another way of
defining regularity of a polyhedron: a polyhedron is regular if and only if it is vertex-uniform,
edge-uniform, and face-uniform.

There are only three symmetry groups associated with the Platonic solids rather than five, since
the symmetry group of any polyhedron coincides with that of its dual. This is easily seen by
examining the construction of the dual polyhedron. Any symmetry of the original must be a
symmetry of the dual and vice versa. The three polyhedral groups are:

the tetrahedral group T,

the octahedral group O (which is also the symmetry group of the cube), and
the icosahedral group I (which is also the symmetry group of the dodecahedron).
Dual compounds
The orders of the proper (rotation) groups are 12, 24, and 60 respectively – precisely twice the
number of edges in the respective polyhedra. The orders of the full symmetry groups are twice as
much again (24, 48, and 120). See (Coxeter 1973) for a derivation of these facts. All Platonic solids except the tetrahedron are
centrally symmetric, meaning they are preserved under reflection through the origin.

The following table lists the various symmetry properties of the Platonic solids. The symmetry groups listed are the full groups
with the rotation subgroups given in parenthesis (likewise for the number of symmetries). Wythoff's kaleidoscope construction
is a method for constructing polyhedra directly from their symmetry groups. They are listed for reference Wythoff's symbol for
each of the Platonic solids.

Schläfli Wythoff Dual Symmetry group (Reflection, rotation)

Polyhedron
symbol symbol polyhedron Polyhedral Schön. Cox. Orb. Order

Td [3,3] *332 24
tetrahedron {3, 3} 3|23 tetrahedron Tetrahedral
T [3,3]+ 332 12

cube {4, 3} 3|24 octahedron Oh [4,3] *432 48

Octahedral
octahedron {3, 4} 4|23 cube O [4,3]+ 432 24

dodecahedron {5, 3} 3|25 icosahedron Ih [5,3] *532 120

Icosahedral
icosahedron {3, 5} 5|23 dodecahedron I [5,3]+ 532 60

In nature and technology

The tetrahedron, cube, and octahedron all occur naturally in crystal structures. These by no means exhaust the numbers of
possible forms of crystals. However, neither the regular icosahedron nor the regular dodecahedron are amongst them. One of
the forms, called the pyritohedron (named for the group of minerals of which it is typical) has twelve pentagonal faces,
arranged in the same pattern as the faces of the regular dodecahedron. The faces of the pyritohedron are, however, not regular,
so the pyritohedron is also not regular. Allotropes of boron and many boron compounds, such as boron carbide, include
discrete B12 icosahedra within their crystal structures. Carborane acids also have molecular structures approximating regular
icosahedra.

In the early 20th century, Ernst Haeckel described (Haeckel, 1904) a number of species of Radiolaria, some of whose skeletons
are shaped like various regular polyhedra. Examples include Circoporus octahedrus, Circogonia icosahedra, Lithocubus
geometricus and Circorrhegma dodecahedra. The shapes of these creatures should be obvious from their names.
Many viruses, such as the herpes virus, have the shape of a regular icosahedron. Viral structures
are built of repeated identical protein subunits and the icosahedron is the easiest shape to
assemble using these subunits. A regular polyhedron is used because it can be built from a single
basic unit protein used over and over again; this saves space in the viral genome.

In meteorology and climatology, global numerical models of atmospheric flow are of increasing
interest which employ geodesic grids that are based on an icosahedron (refined by triangulation)
instead of the more commonly used longitude/latitude grid. This has the advantage of evenly
distributed spatial resolution without singularities (i.e. the poles) at the expense of somewhat
greater numerical difficulty.
Circogonia icosahedra, a
Geometry of space frames is often based on platonic solids. In the MERO system, Platonic solids species of radiolaria,
are used for naming convention of various space frame configurations. For example, 12 O+T shaped like a regular
refers to a configuration made of one half of octahedron and a tetrahedron. icosahedron.

Several Platonic hydrocarbons have been synthesised, including cubane and dodecahedrane.

Tetrahedrane Cubane Dodecahedrane

Platonic solids are often used to make dice, because dice of these shapes can be made fair. 6-sided dice are very common, but
the other numbers are commonly used in role-playing games. Such dice are commonly referred to as dn where n is the number
of faces (d8, d20, etc.); see dice notation for more details.

These shapes frequently show up in other games or puzzles. Puzzles similar to a

Rubik's Cube come in all five shapes – see magic polyhedra.

Liquid crystals with symmetries of Platonic solids

For the intermediate material phase called liquid crystals, the existence of such
symmetries was first proposed in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki.[11][12] In aluminum
the icosahedral structure was discovered three years after this by Dan Shechtman,
which earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.
A set of polyhedral dice.

Related polyhedra and polytopes

Uniform polyhedra

There exist four regular polyhedra that are not convex, called Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra. These all have icosahedral symmetry
and may be obtained as stellations of the dodecahedron and the icosahedron.

The next most regular convex polyhedra after the Platonic solids are the
cuboctahedron, which is a rectification of the cube and the octahedron, and the
icosidodecahedron, which is a rectification of the dodecahedron and the icosahedron
(the rectification of the self-dual tetrahedron is a regular octahedron). These are
both quasi-regular, meaning that they are vertex- and edge-uniform and have
regular faces, but the faces are not all congruent (coming in two different classes).
They form two of the thirteen Archimedean solids, which are the convex uniform
cuboctahedron icosidodecahedron
polyhedra with polyhedral symmetry. Their duals, the rhombic dodecahedron and rhombic triacontahedron, are edge- and face-
transitive, but their faces are not regular and their vertices come in two types each; they are two of the thirteen Catalan solids.

The uniform polyhedra form a much broader class of polyhedra. These figures are vertex-uniform and have one or more types
of regular or star polygons for faces. These include all the polyhedra mentioned above together with an infinite set of prisms,
an infinite set of antiprisms, and 53 other non-convex forms.

The Johnson solids are convex polyhedra which have regular faces but are not uniform. Among them are five of the eight
convex deltahedra, which have identical, regular faces (all equilateral triangles) but are not uniform. (The other three convex
deltahedra are the Platonic tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron.)

Regular tessellations

The three regular tessellations of the plane are closely related to Regular spherical tilings
the Platonic solids. Indeed, one can view the Platonic solids as Platonic tilings
regular tessellations of the sphere. This is done by projecting each
solid onto a concentric sphere. The faces project onto regular
spherical polygons which exactly cover the sphere. Spherical
tilings provide two infinite additional sets of regular tilings, the
hosohedra, {2,n} with 2 vertices at the poles, and lune faces, and
{3,3} {4,3} {3,4} {5,3} {3,5}
the dual dihedra, {n,2} with 2 hemispherical faces and regularly
spaced vertices on the equator. Such tesselations would be Regular dihedral tilings
degenerate in true 3D space as polyhedra.

One can show that every regular tessellation of the sphere is

characterized by a pair of integers {p, q} with 1p + 1q > 12 .
Likewise, a regular tessellation of the plane is characterized by the {2,2} {3,2} {4,2} {5,2} {6,2}...

condition 1p + 1q = 12 . There are three possibilities: Regular hosohedral tilings

The three regular tilings of the Euclidean plane

{2,2} {2,3} {2,4} {2,5} {2,6}...

{4, 4} {3, 6} {6, 3}

In a similar manner, one can consider regular tessellations of the hyperbolic plane. These are characterized by the condition 1p
+ 1q < 12 . There is an infinite family of such tessellations.

Example regular tilings of the hyperbolic plane

{5, 4} {4, 5} {7, 3} {3, 7}

Higher dimensions

In more than three dimensions, polyhedra generalize to polytopes, with higher-dimensional convex regular polytopes being the
equivalents of the three-dimensional Platonic solids.

In the mid-19th century the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli discovered the four-dimensional analogues of the Platonic
solids, called convex regular 4-polytopes. There are exactly six of these figures; five are analogous to the Platonic solids 5-cell
as {3,3,3}, 16-cell as {3,3,4}, 600-cell as {3,3,5}, tesseract as {4,3,3}, and 120-cell as {5,3,3}, and a sixth one, the self-dual
24-cell, {3,4,3}.

In all dimensions higher than four, there are only three convex regular polytopes: the simplex as {3,3,...,3}, the hypercube as
{4,3,...,3}, and the cross-polytope as {3,3,...,4}.[13] In three dimensions, these coincide with the tetrahedron as {3,3}, the cube
as {4,3}, and the octahedron as {3,4}.

See also
Archimedean solid List of regular polytopes
Catalan solid Prince Rupert's cube
Deltahedron Regular polytopes
Johnson solid Regular skew polyhedron
Goldberg solid Toroidal polyhedron
Kepler solids

References
1. Gardner (1987): Martin Gardner wrote a popular account of the five solids in his December 1958 Mathematical
Games column in Scientific American.
2. Zeyl, Donald. "Plato's Timaeus" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/). The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
3. Lloyd 2012.
4. Wildberg (1988): Wildberg discusses the correspondence of the Platonic solids with elements in Timaeus but
notes that this correspondence appears to have been forgotten in Epinomis, which he calls "a long step towards
Aristotle's theory", and he points out that Aristotle's ether is above the other four elements rather than on an
equal footing with them, making the correspondence less apposite.
5. Weyl 1952, p. 74.
6. Hecht & Stevens 2004.
7. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, sec 1.8 Configurations
8. Jerrard, Richard P.; Wetzel, John E.; Yuan, Liping (April 2017). "Platonic Passages". Mathematics Magazine.
Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America. 90 (2): 87–98. doi:10.4169/math.mag.90.2.87 (https://d
oi.org/10.4169%2Fmath.mag.90.2.87).
9. Schrek, D. J. E. (1950), "Prince Rupert's problem and its extension by Pieter Nieuwland", Scripta Mathematica,
16: 73–80 and 261–267
10. Scriba, Christoph J. (1968), "Das Problem des Prinzen Ruprecht von der Pfalz", Praxis der Mathematik (in
German), 10 (9): 241–246, MR 0497615 (https://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=0497615)
11. Kleinert and Maki (1981)
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External links
Platonic solids at Encyclopaedia of Mathematics (http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Platonic_solids)
Weisstein, Eric W. "Platonic solid" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html). MathWorld.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Isohedron" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Isohedron.html). MathWorld.
Book XIII (http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookXIII/propXIII13.html) of Euclid's Elements.
Interactive 3D Polyhedra (https://web.archive.org/web/20050403235101/http://ibiblio.org/e-notes/3Dapp/Conve
x.htm) in Java
Platonic Solids (http://dmccooey.com/polyhedra/Platonic.html) in Visual Polyhedra
Solid Body Viewer (https://kovacsv.github.com/JSModeler/documentation/examples/solids.html) is an
interactive 3D polyhedron viewer which allows you to save the model in svg, stl or obj format.
Interactive Folding/Unfolding Platonic Solids (http://www.mat.puc-rio.br/~hjbortol/mathsolid/mathsolid_en.html)
in Java
Paper models of the Platonic solids (http://www.software3d.com/Platonic.php) created using nets generated by
Stella software
Platonic Solids (http://www.korthalsaltes.com/cuadros.php?type=p) Free paper models(nets)
Grime, James; Steckles, Katie. "Platonic Solids" (http://www.numberphile.com/videos/platonic_solids.html).
Numberphile. Brady Haran.
Teaching Math with Art (http://www.ldlewis.com/Teaching-Mathematics-with-Art/Polyhedra.html) student-created
models
Teaching Math with Art (http://www.ldlewis.com/Teaching-Mathematics-with-Art/instructions-for-polyhedra-proje
ct.html) teacher instructions for making models
Frames of Platonic Solids (http://www.bru.hlphys.jku.at/surf/Kepler_Model.html) images of algebraic surfaces
Platonic Solids (http://whistleralley.com/polyhedra/platonic.htm) with some formula derivations (http://whistlerall
ey.com/polyhedra/derivations.htm)
How to make four platonic solids from a cube (http://woodenpolyhedra.web.fc2.com/making.pdf)

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