EXTREMUM PROPERTIES of the REGULAR POLYTOPES by L

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

EXTREMUM PROPERTIES of the REGULAR POLYTOPES by L EXTREMUM PROPERTIES OF THE REGULAR POLYTOPES By L. FEjES TOTH (Budapest) (Presented by G. HAJOS) It is more than a century ago that L. SCHL.~FLI1 discovered the higher dimensional analogues of the five Platonic solids. He found that besides the regular simplex, cross polytope and measure polytope, i.e. the analogues of the regular tetrahedron {3,3}, octahedron {3,4} and the cube {4,3}, there are only three further convex regular polytopes, all in four dimensions. These are the self dual {3, 4,3} made up from 24 {3, 4}, 3 around each edge, {3, 3,5} bounded by 600 f{3,3}, 5 around each edge, and its dual, {5, 3, 3} having 120 {5, 3}-cells (dodecahedra), 3 around each edge. The great variety of the well-known extremum properties of the regular polygons, and especially of the equilateral triangle, suggests analogous pro- perties of the regular solids and polytopes. In fact, many extremum properties of the regular polygons can easily be lraosferred to the regular simplex and a part of them to the cross polytope or measure poiytope.~ Also {5, 3} and {3,5} (icosahedron) can be characterised by different extremum postulates? But -- though the theory of the regular polytopes has a vast literature ~ -- little, if anything, is known in this direction about the "non-trivial" regular polytopes {3, 4, 3}, {3, 3, 5} and {5, 3, 3} mentioned above2 In the present paper we shall give a simple proof6 of the fact that among those convex four-dimensional polytopes of given insphere which are topologically isomorphic with {3, 3, 3} (regular simplex), or {3, 3, 4} (cross 1 Theorie der vielfachen Kontinuit~it, Denkschriften der schweizerischen natulfor- schenden Gesellschaft, 38 (1901), pp. 1--237;- Ges. Abh. I (Basel, 1950), pp. 167--387. 2 See e. g. the remarks on the end of the paper. 3 L. FEJES T6TH, Lagerungen in der Ebene, auf der Kugel und im Raum (Berlin-- G6ttingen--Heidelberg, 1953). 4 H. S. M. COXZTER,Regular polytopes (London, 1948). 5 L. FEJEs T6rrb On close-packings of spheres in spaces of constant curvature, Publicationes Math. (Debrecen), 3 (1953), pp. 158--167. 6 Compare our proof with M. GOLO~Z~a, The isoperimetric problem for polyhedra, TOhoku Math. J., 42 (1935), pp. 226--236, and H. HAOWmER,Zur isoperimetrischen Unglei- chung flit k-dimensionale konvexe Polyeder, Nagoya Math. jr., 5 (1953), pp. 39--44. 144 L. FEJESTOTH polytope), or {3, 3,5} (600-cell), or {3,4, 3} (24-ce11), the corresponding regular polytope has the minimal volume. It was J. STEINER who first compared polyhedra of the same topologic: type, probably in order to characterize all the five regular solids by a unique extremum condition. 7 We can guess that the consideration of isomorphic polytopes has the same effect also in higher dimensions. For example, there is no doubt that the above proposition holds for {4, 3, 3} (measure polytope) and {5, 3, 3} (120-cell) too, but the proof of this conjecture seems to be not so simple. On the other hand, for the remaining polytopes our proof yields a little more: Among all convex four-dimensional polytopes of given insphere bounded by 5, 16 or 600 tetrahedra or 24 polyhedra isomorphic with the regular Octa- hedron the corresponding regular polytope has the minimal volume. Let P be in 4-space a convex polytope bounded by n tetrahedra t~, ..., t~ and containing the unit sphere S. Let ,~ be the spherical tetrahedron arising from ti by central projection upon S. The sum of the volumes8 ,~ equals the surface (3-dimensional content) of S: .~ ~i = 2 :r 2. i=l We assert that >= where v(~) denotes the volume of a regular tetrahedron whose hyperplane (3-space) touches S at the centre of the tetrahedron and the central projection of which has a volume equal to ~. This is equivalent to the fact that among the tetrahedra t, of given volume, whose hyperplanes do not intersect S, the regular tetrahedron touching S at its centre has maximal projection. It is easy to show that if t is not entirely contained in a sufficiently large sphere concentric with S the projection ~7 of t becomes arbitrarily small. Therefore we can restrict ourself to tetrahedra lying in a fixed sphere and (with respect to the continuity of the functional ~7) the existence of an extremal tetrahedron follows from the theorem of WEmRSTRASS. Obviously, we can suppose that the hyperplane of t touches S at a point O since otherwise we could increase the volume of its projection by a trans- lation. Let H be a plane through 0, orthogonal to an edge of t. Let us replace all chords c of t orthogonal to H by the chords c' of the same length and lying on the same line symmetrically with respect to H. This process, called symmetrisation of STE1NER, 9 carries t into a new tetrahedron t' of the : Such a characterisation is impossible by comparing polyhedra of given number of faces or vertices. 8 We denote a body and its volume by the same symbol. 9 The symmetrisation of a tetrahedron and octahedron was already used by STEmErr in order to establish the isoperimetric property of {3, 3} and {3, 4}. .
Recommended publications
  • Abstract Regular Polytopes
    ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS Abstract Regular Polytopes PETER MMULLEN University College London EGON SCHULTE Northeastern University PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarc´on 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org c Peter McMullen and Egon Schulte 2002 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2002 Printed in the United States of America Typeface Times New Roman 10/12.5 pt. System LATEX2ε [] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McMullen, Peter, 1955– Abstract regular polytopes / Peter McMullen, Egon Schulte. p. cm. – (Encyclopedia of mathematics and its applications) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-81496-0 1. Polytopes. I. Schulte, Egon, 1955– II. Title. III. Series. QA691 .M395 2002 516.35 – dc21 2002017391 ISBN 0 521 81496 0 hardback Contents Preface page xiii 1 Classical Regular Polytopes 1 1A The Historical Background 1 1B Regular Convex Polytopes 7 1C Extensions
    [Show full text]
  • Four-Dimensional Regular Polytopes
    faculty of science mathematics and applied and engineering mathematics Four-dimensional regular polytopes Bachelor’s Project Mathematics November 2020 Student: S.H.E. Kamps First supervisor: Prof.dr. J. Top Second assessor: P. Kiliçer, PhD Abstract Since Ancient times, Mathematicians have been interested in the study of convex, regular poly- hedra and their beautiful symmetries. These five polyhedra are also known as the Platonic Solids. In the 19th century, the four-dimensional analogues of the Platonic solids were described mathe- matically, adding one regular polytope to the collection with no analogue regular polyhedron. This thesis describes the six convex, regular polytopes in four-dimensional Euclidean space. The focus lies on deriving information about their cells, faces, edges and vertices. Besides that, the symmetry groups of the polytopes are touched upon. To better understand the notions of regularity and sym- metry in four dimensions, our journey begins in three-dimensional space. In this light, the thesis also works out the details of a proof of prof. dr. J. Top, showing there exist exactly five convex, regular polyhedra in three-dimensional space. Keywords: Regular convex 4-polytopes, Platonic solids, symmetry groups Acknowledgements I would like to thank prof. dr. J. Top for supervising this thesis online and adapting to the cir- cumstances of Covid-19. I also want to thank him for his patience, and all his useful comments in and outside my LATEX-file. Also many thanks to my second supervisor, dr. P. Kılıçer. Furthermore, I would like to thank Jeanne for all her hospitality and kindness to welcome me in her home during the process of writing this thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Regular Polyhedra Through Time
    Fields Institute I. Hubard Polytopes, Maps and their Symmetries September 2011 Regular polyhedra through time The greeks were the first to study the symmetries of polyhedra. Euclid, in his Elements showed that there are only five regular solids (that can be seen in Figure 1). In this context, a polyhe- dron is regular if all its polygons are regular and equal, and you can find the same number of them at each vertex. Figure 1: Platonic Solids. It is until 1619 that Kepler finds other two regular polyhedra: the great dodecahedron and the great icosahedron (on Figure 2. To do so, he allows \false" vertices and intersection of the (convex) faces of the polyhedra at points that are not vertices of the polyhedron, just as the I. Hubard Polytopes, Maps and their Symmetries Page 1 Figure 2: Kepler polyhedra. 1619. pentagram allows intersection of edges at points that are not vertices of the polygon. In this way, the vertex-figure of these two polyhedra are pentagrams (see Figure 3). Figure 3: A regular convex pentagon and a pentagram, also regular! In 1809 Poinsot re-discover Kepler's polyhedra, and discovers its duals: the small stellated dodecahedron and the great stellated dodecahedron (that are shown in Figure 4). The faces of such duals are pentagrams, and are organized on a \convex" way around each vertex. Figure 4: The other two Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. 1809. A couple of years later Cauchy showed that these are the only four regular \star" polyhedra. We note that the convex hull of the great dodecahedron, great icosahedron and small stellated dodecahedron is the icosahedron, while the convex hull of the great stellated dodecahedron is the dodecahedron.
    [Show full text]
  • On Regular Polytope Numbers
    PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 131, Number 1, Pages 65{75 S 0002-9939(02)06710-2 Article electronically published on June 12, 2002 ON REGULAR POLYTOPE NUMBERS HYUN KWANG KIM (Communicated by David E. Rohrlich) Abstract. Lagrange proved a theorem which states that every nonnegative integer can be written as a sum of four squares. This result can be generalized as the polygonal number theorem and the Hilbert-Waring problem. In this paper, we shall generalize Lagrange's sum of four squares theorem further. To each regular polytope V in a Euclidean space, we will associate a sequence of nonnegative integers which we shall call regular polytope numbers, and consider the problem of finding the order g(V )ofthesetofregularpolytope numbers associated to V . In 1770, Lagrange proved a theorem which states that every nonnegative integer can be written as a sum of four squares. There are two major generalizations of this beautiful result. One is a horizontal generalization due to Cauchy which is known as the polygonal number theorem, and the other is a higher dimensional generalization which is known as the Hilbert-Waring problem. A nonempty subset A of nonnegative integers is called a basis of order g if g is the minimum number with the property that every nonnegative integer can be written as a sum of g elements in A. Lagrange's sum of four squares can be restated as: the set n2 n =0; 1; 2;::: of nonnegative squares forms a basis of order 4. The polygonalf numbersj are sequencesg of nonnegative integers constructed geometrically from regular polygons.
    [Show full text]
  • CONVEX and ABSTRACT POLYTOPES 1 Thursday, May 19, 2005 to Saturday, May, 21, 2005
    CONVEX AND ABSTRACT POLYTOPES 1 Thursday, May 19, 2005 to Saturday, May, 21, 2005 MEALS Breakfast (Continental): 7:00 - 9:00 am, 2nd floor lounge, Corbett Hall, Friday & Saturday. Lunch (Buffet): 11:30 am - 1:30 pm, Donald Cameron Hall, Friday & Saturday. Dinner (Buffet): 5:30 - 7:30 pm, Donald Cameron Hall, Thursday & Friday. Coffee Breaks: As per daily schedule, 2nd floor lounge, Corbett Hall. **For other lighter meal options at the Banff Centre, there are two other options: Gooseberry’s Deli, located in the Sally Borden Building, and The Kiln Cafe, located beside Donald Cameron Hall. There are also plenty of restaurants and cafes in the town of Banff, a 10-15 minute walk from Corbett Hall.** MEETING ROOMS All lectures are held in Max Bell 159. Hours: 6 am - 12 midnight. LCD projector, overhead projectors and blackboards are available for presentations. Please note that the meeting space designated for BIRS is the lower level of Max Bell, Rooms 155-159. Please respect that all other space has been contracted to other Banff Centre guests, including any Food and Beverage in those areas. SCHEDULE Thursday 16:00 Check-in begins (Front Desk - Professional Development Centre - open 24 hours) 19:30 Informal gathering in 2nd floor lounge, Corbett Hall. Beverages and small assortment of snacks available in the lounge on a cash honour-system basis. Friday 9:15-10:05 C.Lee — Some Construction Techniques for Convex Polytopes. 10:15-10:35 J.Lawrence — Intersections of Convex Transversals. 10:45-11:15 Coffee Break, 2nd floor lounge, Corbett Hall. 11:15-11:35 R.Dawson — New Triangulations of the Sphere.
    [Show full text]
  • 3D Visualization Models of the Regular Polytopes in Four and Higher Dimensions
    BRIDGES Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science 3D Visualization Models of the Regular Polytopes in Four and Higher Dimensions Carlo H. Sequin Computer Science Division, EECS Department University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 E-maih [email protected] Abstract This paper presents a tutorial review of the construction of all regular polytopes in spaces of all possible dimensions . .It focusses on how to make instructive, 3-dimensional, physical visualization models for the polytopes of dimensions 4 through 6, using solid free-form fabrication technology. 1. Introduction Polytope is a generalization of the terms in the sequence: point, segment, polygon, polyhedron ... [1]. Such a polytope is called regular, if all its elements (vertices, edges, faces, cells ... ) are indistinguishable, i.e., if there exists a group of spatial transformations (rotations, mirroring) that will bring the polytope into coverage with itself. Through these symmetry operations, it must be possible to transform any particular element of the polytope into any other chosen element of the same kind. In two dimensions, there exist infinitely many regular polygons; the first five are shown in Figure 1. • • • Figure 1: The simplest regular 2D polygons. In three-dimensional space, there are just five regular polyhedra -- the Platonic solids, and they can readily be depicted by using shaded perspective renderings (Fig.2). As we contemplate higher dimensions and the regular polytopes that they may admit, it becomes progressively harder to understand the geometry of these objects. Projections down to two (printable) dimensions discard a fair amount of information, and people often have difficulties comprehending even 4D polytopes, when only shown pictures or 2D graphs.
    [Show full text]
  • Wythoffian Skeletal Polyhedra
    Wythoffian Skeletal Polyhedra by Abigail Williams B.S. in Mathematics, Bates College M.S. in Mathematics, Northeastern University A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of the College of Science of Northeastern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 14, 2015 Dissertation directed by Egon Schulte Professor of Mathematics Dedication I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my Meme. She has always been my loudest cheerleader and has supported me in all that I have done. Thank you, Meme. ii Abstract of Dissertation Wythoff's construction can be used to generate new polyhedra from the symmetry groups of the regular polyhedra. In this dissertation we examine all polyhedra that can be generated through this construction from the 48 regular polyhedra. We also examine when the construction produces uniform polyhedra and then discuss other methods for finding uniform polyhedra. iii Acknowledgements I would like to start by thanking Professor Schulte for all of the guidance he has provided me over the last few years. He has given me interesting articles to read, provided invaluable commentary on this thesis, had many helpful and insightful discussions with me about my work, and invited me to wonderful conferences. I truly cannot thank him enough for all of his help. I am also very thankful to my committee members for their time and attention. Additionally, I want to thank my family and friends who, for years, have supported me and pretended to care everytime I start talking about math. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Keith.
    [Show full text]
  • Realizing Regular Polytopes Over Q
    REGULAR POLYTOPES REALIZED OVER Q TREVOR HYDE A regular polytope is a d-dimensional generalization of a regular polygon and a Platonic solid. Roughly, they are convex geometric objects with maximal rotational symmetry. To avoid stating a precise definition we appeal to a known complete classification of all regular polytopes. The codimension 1 parts of a polytope are called facets. For example, the facets of a cube are squares. • Dimension 2: In two dimensions, the regular polytopes are the familiar regular polygons. There is a regular n-gon for every n ≥ 3. • Dimension 3: There are five regular polytopes in three dimensions, these are the Platonic solids: ◦ Tetrahedron, or 3-simplex ◦ Cube, or 3-cube ◦ Octahedron, or 3-orthoplex ◦ Dodecahedron ◦ Icosahedron Each regular polytope P has a dual—also a regular polytope—formed by placing vertices at the center of each facet of P and then taking the convex hull of these vertices. Taking the dual of the resulting polytope gives us a copy of the original polytope, hence the terminology. Each regular n-gon is its own dual. The tetrahedron is its own dual. The cube and octahedron are dual, as are the dodecahedron and icosahedron. • Dimension 4: We have six regular polytopes in four dimensions described below by their three dimensional facets: ◦ 4-simplex (3-simplex facets) ◦ 4-cube (3-cube facets) ◦ 4-orthoplex (3-simplex facets) ◦ 24-cell (octahedral facets) ◦ 120-cell (dodecahedral facets) ◦ 600-cell (3-simplex facets) The 4-simplex and the 24-cell are both self-dual. The 4-cube and 4-orthoplex are dual, as are the 120-cell and 600-cell.
    [Show full text]
  • 4D-Polytopes Described by Coxeter Diagrams and Quaternions
    GROUP 28: Physical and Mathematical Aspects of Symmetry IOP Publishing Journal of Physics: Conference Series 284 (2011) 012040 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/284/1/012040 4d-polytopes described by Coxeter diagrams and quaternions Mehmet Koca Sultan Qaboos University College of Science, Physics Department P.O Box 36, Al-Khoudh, 123 Muscat Sultanate of Oman E-mail: [email protected] Abstract 4D-polytopes and their dual polytopes can be described as the orbits of the rank-4 Coxeter-Weyl groups. Their symmetries follow from the quaternionic descriptions of the rank-4 Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams. There exists a one to one correspondence between the finite subgroups of quaternions and the rank-4 Coxeter-Weyl groups. 1. Introduction Discovery of the Platonic solids; tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron dates back to the people of Scotland lived 1000 years earlier than the ancient Greeks and the models curved on the stones are now kept in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford [1]. Plato associated tetrahedron with fire, cube with earth, air with octahedron, and water with icosahedron. Archimedes discovered the semi-regular convex solids and several centuries later they were rediscovered by the renaissance mathematicians. By introducing prisms and anti-prisms as well as four regular non-convex polyhedra, Kepler completed the work in 1620. Nearly two centuries later, in 1865, Catalan constructed the dual solids of the Archimedean solids now known as Catalan solids [2]. Extensions of the platonic solids to 4D dimensions have been made in 1855 by L. Schlaffli [3] and their generalizations to higher dimensions in 1900 by T.Gosset [4].
    [Show full text]
  • Regular Polytope Networks Federico Pernici, Matteo Bruni, Claudio Baecchi and Alberto Del Bimbo, Member, IEEE
    1 Regular Polytope Networks Federico Pernici, Matteo Bruni, Claudio Baecchi and Alberto Del Bimbo, Member, IEEE, Abstract—Neural networks are widely used as a model for ℝ푑 ℝ푑 ℝ푑 classification in a large variety of tasks. Typically, a learnable transformation (i.e. the classifier) is placed at the end of such models returning a value for each class used for classification. 퐰 This transformation plays an important role in determining how 퐰푖 푖 the generated features change during the learning process. In 퐰푖 this work, we argue that this transformation not only can be fixed (i.e. set as non-trainable) with no loss of accuracy and with a reduction in memory usage, but it can also be used 퐟 퐟 퐟 to learn stationary and maximally separated embeddings. We show that the stationarity of the embedding and its maximal separated representation can be theoretically justified by setting DCNN DCNN DCNN the weights of the fixed classifier to values taken from the coordinate vertices of the three regular polytopes available in d R , namely: the d-Simplex, the d-Cube and the d-Orthoplex. These regular polytopes have the maximal amount of symmetry Fig. 1. Regular Polytope Networks (RePoNet). The fixed classifiers derived d that can be exploited to generate stationary features angularly from the three regular polytopes available in R with d ≥ 5 are shown. centered around their corresponding fixed weights. Our approach From left: the d-Simplex, the d-Cube and the d-Orthoplex fixed classifier. improves and broadens the concept of a fixed classifier, recently The trainable parameters wi of the classifier are replaced with fixed values proposed in [1], to a larger class of fixed classifier models.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Download Regular Polytopes Ebook
    REGULAR POLYTOPES PDF, EPUB, EBOOK H. S. M. Coxeter | 321 pages | 15 Apr 1974 | Dover Publications Inc. | 9780486614809 | English | New York, United States Regular Polytopes PDF Book The measure and cross polytopes in any dimension are dual to each other. The notation is best explained by adding one dimension at a time. Sort order. Normally, for abstract regular polytopes, a mathematician considers that the object is "constructed" if the structure of its symmetry group is known. Grand stellated cell grand stellated polydodecahedron aspD. Another way to "draw" the higher-dimensional shapes in 3 dimensions is via some kind of projection, for example, the analogue of either orthographic or perspective projection. The new shape has only three faces, 6 edges and 4 corners. Mark point D in a third, orthogonal, dimension a distance r from all three, and join to form a regular tetrahedron. Refresh and try again. The Beauty of Geometry: Twelve Essays. Wireframe stereographic projections 3-sphere. In mathematics , a regular 4-polytope is a regular four-dimensional polytope. Wikimedia Commons. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. The final stellation, the great grand stellated polydodecahedron contains them all as gaspD. Regularity has a related, though different meaning for abstract polytopes , since angles and lengths of edges have no meaning. Steve rated it really liked it Feb 14, Great grand stellated cell great grand stellated polydodecahedron gaspD. They called them regular skew polyhedra, because they seemed to satisfy the definition of a regular polyhedron — all the vertices, edges and faces are alike, all the angles are the same, and the figure has no free edges.
    [Show full text]
  • 18 SYMMETRY of POLYTOPES and POLYHEDRA Egon Schulte
    18 SYMMETRY OF POLYTOPES AND POLYHEDRA Egon Schulte INTRODUCTION Symmetry of geometric figures is among the most frequently recurring themes in science. The present chapter discusses symmetry of discrete geometric structures, namely of polytopes, polyhedra, and related polytope-like figures. These structures have an outstanding history of study unmatched by almost any other geometric object. The most prominent symmetric figures, the regular solids, occur from very early times and are attributed to Plato (427-347 b.c.e.). Since then, many changes in point of view have occurred about these figures and their symmetry. With the arrival of group theory in the 19th century, many of the early approaches were consolidated and the foundations were laid for a more rigorous development of the theory. In this vein, Schl¨afli (1814-1895) extended the concept of regular polytopes and tessellations to higher dimensional spaces and explored their symmetry groups as reflection groups. Today we owe much of our present understanding of symmetry in geometric figures (in a broad sense) to the influential work of Coxeter, which provided a unified approach to regularity of figures based on a powerful interplay of geometry and algebra [Cox73]. Coxeter’s work also greatly influenced modern developments in this area, which received a further impetus from work by Gr¨unbaum and Danzer [Gr¨u77a,DS82]. In the past 20 years, the study of regular figures has been extended in several directions that are all centered around an abstract combinatorial polytope theory and a combinatorial notion of regularity [McS02]. History teaches us that the subject has shown an enormous potential for revival.
    [Show full text]