ILLL

Platonic Solids

Dr Shobha Bagai University of Delhi

PLATONIC SOLIDS
Trace the following figures on a piece of paper and cut it along the outer edges marked in red. Fold it along the dotted blue lines so that the red lines join. You get a solid figure in each case.

Can you name these solids?

Fig. 1 The solid obtained in the first case is a tetrahedron, a cube in the second case and an octahedron in the last case. The given figures are called the net of the solids.

(a) Tetrahedron

(b) Cube

(c) Octahedron

What's so special about these geometric shapes? 1) Each formation will have the same shape on every side (equilateral triangle in case of a tetrahedron and an octahedron and square in case of a cube. 2) Every line on each of the formations will be exactly the same length. 3) Every internal angle on each of the formations will also be the same. 4) Each shape will fit perfectly inside a sphere, all the points touching the edges of the sphere. 5) Same number of lines meets at the vertex (three in case of a tetrahedron and a cube and four in case of an octahedron)

Are these the only solids that exhibit these properties or are there more?

Two more solids exhibit these properties (a) Dodecahedron (b) Icosahedron. Dodecahedron is made up of 12 pentagons and icosahedron of 20 equilateral triangles

Are these the only five solids exhibiting these properties or are there more? Before we answer this question, let us learn more about such solids. PLATONIC SOLIDS The solids mentioned above are called the Platonic solids or regular solids or regular polyhedra. They belong to the group of geometric figures called polyhedra. A polyhedron is a solid bounded by plane polygons. The polygons are called faces. They intersect in edges. The points where three or more edges intersect are called vertices. These solids are named after Plato.

Plato (427 BC 347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, who, together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world.

Plato wrote about the Platonic Solids in his work Timaeus c.360 B.C. In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth and water and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity, and every solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and every plane rectilinear figure is composed of triangles;. And next we have to determine what are the four most beautiful bodies which are unlike one another, and of which some are capable of resolution into one another; for having discovered thus much, we shall know the true origin of earth and fire and of the proportionate and intermediate elements. Now, the one which we maintain to be the most beautiful of all the many triangles (and we need not speak of the others) is that of which the double forms a third triangle which is equilateral; the reason of this would be long to tell; .. I have now to speak of their several kinds, and show out of what combinations of numbers each of them was formed. The first will be the simplest and smallest construction, and its element is that triangle which has its hypotenuse twice the lesser side. When two such triangles are joined at the diagonal, and this is repeated three times, and the triangles rest their diagonals and shorter sides on the same point as a centre, a single equilateral triangle is formed out of six triangles; and four equilateral triangles, if put together, make out of every three plane angles one solid angle, being that which is nearest to the most obtuse of plane angles; and out of the combination of these four angles arises the first solid form which distributes into equal and similar parts the whole circle in which it is inscribed. The second species of solid is formed out of the same triangles, which unite as eight equilateral triangles and form one solid angle out of four plane angles, and out of six such angles the second body is completed. And the third body is made up of 120 triangular elements, forming twelve solid angles, each of them included in five plane equilateral triangles, having altogether twenty bases, each of which is an equilateral triangle. The one element [that is, the triangle which has its hypotenuse twice the lesser side] having generated these figures, generated no more; but the isosceles triangle produced the fourth elementary figure, which is compounded of four such triangles, joining their right angles in a centre, and forming one equilateral quadrangle. Six of these united form eight solid angles, each of which is made by the combination of three plane right angles; the figure of the body thus composed is a cube, having six plane quadrangular equilateral bases. Plato associated each of the four classical elements earth, air, water and fire with the regular solid cube, octahedron, icosahedron and tetrahedron respectively (Fig. 2).

He further writes in the Timaeus:

We must proceed to distribute the figures [the solids] we have just described between fire, earth, water, and air. .. Let us assign the cube to earth, for it is the most immobile of the four bodies and most retentive of shape the least mobile of the remaining figures (icosahedron) to water the most mobile (tetrahedron) to fire the intermediate (octahedron) to air

Fig. 2 Note that earth is associated with the cube, with its six square faces. This lent support to the notion of the four squaredness of the earth. But there are five regular polyhedra and only four elements. For the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks "There still remained a fifth construction, which the god used for embroidering the constellations on the whole heaven." Plato's statement is vague, and he gives no further explanation. Later Greek philosophers assign the dodecahedron to the ether or heaven or the cosmos. The dodecahedron has 12 faces, and our number symbolism associates 12 with the zodiac. This might be Plato's meaning when he writes of "embroidering the constellations" on the dodecahedron. Note that the 12 faces of the dodecahedron are pentagons. The pentagon contains the golden ratio. Perhaps this has something to do with equating this figure with the cosmos. [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html] However, Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. Ornamented models of them can be found among the carved stone balls created by the late Neolithic people of Scotland at least 1000 of years before Plato (Fig. 3)

Fig. 3

The Egyptians, of course, knew not only of the tetrahedron, but also the octahedron, and cube. Polyhedra have also served as art motifs from prehistoric times right up to the present.

Mosaic from San Marco Cathedral, Venice

Keplers model of solar system using platonic solids

In Mysterium Cosmographicum [http://www.georgehart.com/virtualpolyhedra/kepler.html], published in 1596, Johannes Kepler described our solar system as having the sun in the centre of six circular planetary orbits (only six of the nine planets were known at that time). The platonic bodies, one within the other, could be fitted between the orbits of the planets

Johannes Kepler (1571 1630) is best remembered for his three laws of planetary motion. He also did important work in optics, discovered two new
regular polyhedra, gave the first mathematical treatment of close packing of equal spheres (leading to an explanation of the shape of the cells of a honeycomb, gave the first proof of how logarithms worked and devised a method of finding the volumes of solids of revolution.

Kepler used this illustration to help explain his first model of the cosmos, based on assigning the orbit of each of the known planets to a different, concentric sphere. The outer sphere is that of Saturn; inside it is the sphere of Jupiter. The Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron) just fit between the concentric spherical shells within which, Kepler supposed, the six known planets revolved around the Sun. The cube stands between the shells of Saturn and Jupiter, the pyramid between those of Jupiter and Mars, and so on.

Fig. 5 is a close up of the spheres of inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. This is a beautiful astronomical model. For example, it explains why there are only six planets. How could there be a seventh planet, when Euclid proved that there are only five Platonic solids! Of course, the model is completely false, the interplanetary distances it predicts are not sufficiently accurate, and Kepler was scientist enough to accept this eventually. But it an excellent example of how truth and beauty are not always equivalent.

Fig. 5 The regular solids, known as polyhedra, held a special fascination for Escher. He made them the subject of many of his works and included them as secondary elements in a great many more. In the woodcut Four Regular Solids (Fig. 6), Escher has intersected all but one of the Platonic solids in such a way that their symmetries are aligned, and he has made them translucent so that each is discernable through the others. Can you guess which one is missing? Fig. 6 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.).

Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron and Icosahedron used as playing dice. Note that except Tetrahedron, all the dice have single number on each face. The tetrahedral dice has its numbers written three times around each vertex, and one simply reads the number which surrounds the uppermost vertex.

Interesting doodles of polyhedra can be found scattered throughout Leonardo's drawings. Fig. 7(a) shows a dodecahedron in the solid edge form, amidst a series of plans for fortifications. Fig. 7(b) is a drawing showing studies for a fountain, in the middle of which we find a doodle of a tetrahedron inscribed in a cube. And in Fig. 7(c), Leonardo draws an interesting packing of cubes, again in the "solid edge"

manner. [http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/leonardo.html]

(a)

Fig. 7 Other sets of solids can be obtained from the Platonic Solids. We can get a set by cutting off the corners of the Platonic solids and get truncated polyhedra. They are no longer regular; they are called semi -regular; all faces are regular polygons, but there is more than one polygon in a particular solid, and all vertices are identical. These are also called the Archimedian Solids, named for Archimedes, (287-212 B.C.) the Greek mathematician.

Archimedes of Syracuse (287 BC 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and the explanation of the principle of the lever.

The Thirteen Archimedian Solids [link]

The second obvious way to get another set of solids is to extend the faces of each to form a star, giving the so-called Star Polyhedra. Poinsot discovered two star polyhedra in 1809. The others were discovered about 200 years before that by Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), the German astronomer and natural philosopher noted for formulating the three laws of planetary motion, now known as Kepler's laws, including the law that celestial bodies have elliptical, not circular orbits.

The Four Kepler-Poinsot Solids

MATHEMATICAL DEFINITION A convex polyhedron is a Platonic solid if and only if 1. 2. 3. All its faces are regular polygons None of its faces intersect except at their edges, and The same number of faces meets at each of its vertices. Each Platonic solid can therefore be denoted by a symbol {p, q} where p = the number of sides of each face (or the number of vertices of each face) and q = the number of faces meeting at each vertex (or the number of edges meeting at each vertex). The symbol {p, q}, called the Schlfli symbol, gives a combinatorial description of the polyhedron. The Schlfli symbols of the five Platonic solids are given in the table below.

Polyhedron Tetrahedron Cube Octahedron Dodecahedron Icosahedron

Number of Vertices Number of Edges Schlfli symbol 4 8 6 20 12 6 12 12 30 30 {3,3} {4,3} {3,4} {5,3} {3,5}

All 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:

pF = 2E = qV
The other relationship between these values is given by Euler's formula: where 2 is the Euler characteristic of the polyhedron. The formula was originally

V "E +F =2

devised by Rene Descartes and later resurrected by Leonhard Euler.

Find out the number of faces of each regular polyhedron and verify Eulers formula. Together these three relationships completely determine V, E, and F:

V=

4p 4 " ( p " 2)(q " 2) 2 pq E= 4 " ( p " 2)(q " 2) 4q F= 4 " ( p " 2)(q " 2)

Note that swapping p and q interchanges F and V while leaving E unchanged. It is a classical result that there are only five convex regular polyhedra. In fact, to construct a vertex of a regular polyhedron two conditions must be met: 1) A minimum of three planes of regular polygons is required 2) The sum of the angles of the polygonal vertices must be less than the full angle of 360. Regular Polygon Triangle No. of Vertex Polygons 3 4 5 6 Square 3 90 Polygon Angle 60 Sum of Angles 180 240 300 360 270 Regular Polyhedron Tetrahedron Octahedron Icosahedron None Cube (Hexahedron) 4 Pentagon 3 4 Hexagon 3 120 108 360 324 432 360 None Dodecahedron None None

Therefore it is not possible to construct a regular polyhedron with regular hexagons or polygons of higher order.

QUESTIONS 1) Draw the nets of dodecahedron and icosahedron. 2) Although pyramids and cuboids satisfy the Eulers formula, they do not come in the category of platonic solids. Discuss. 3) Find out more solids that are not platonic solids yet satisfy the Eulers Formula. Can you name some solids that do not satisfy the Eulers formula? Why do you think that these solids do not satisfy Eulers formula?

4) Select one corner of a cube and join it to the opposite corner on each face that intersect at that corner. Name the solid obtained.

5) Join the midpoints of faces of a cube. If two faces are next to each other at a corner, then their midpoints can be joined. What is the solid obtained?

6) Repeat question 4 with a tetrahedron.

7) Look at the surface of a football. How many faces does it have? Name and number the polygons constituting the faces of the football. Can you identify the name of the shape? Does it satisfy the Eulers formula?

REFERENCES 1) J. Gullberg, Mathematics: From the birth of numbers, W.W. Norton and company, New York (1997) 2) http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html 3) http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/leonardo.html 4) http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit6/unit6.html 5) http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Plato/Timaeus/timaeus2.htm (for translation of Timaeus)