Truncated Icosahedron EG-Models Home

image truncated_icosahedron_Preview.gif
Electronic Geometry Model No. 2001.02.065

Author

Martin Henk

Description

Densest lattice packing of a truncated icosahedron

The truncated icosahedron (also known as soccer-ball) has 60 vertices, 90 edges and 32 facets, 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. It is one of the thirteen Archimedean solids and its dual is called pentakis dodecahedron. It was rediscovered during th 15th century by the outstanding artist Piero della Francesca.

The density of a densest lattice packing was calculated with the algorithm of Betke and Henk. The density is equal to 0.7849..., and the 12 points in the picture show the lattice points of a critical lattice lying in the boundary.

Model produced with: JavaView v2.00.a11

Keywords lattice packings; polytopes; packings; critical lattice; truncated icosahedron
MSC-2000 Classification 52C17 (11H31)
Zentralblatt No. 01683006

References

  1. Ulrich Betke and Martin Henk: Densest lattice packings of 3-polytopes, Comp. Geom. 16, 3 (2000), 157 - 186.

Files

Gif-file was produced by Povray 3.02

Submission information

Submitted: Thu Feb 1 16:41:52 CET 2001.
Accepted: Fri Apr 27 14:11:54 CET 2001.

Author's Address

Martin Henk
University of Magdeburg
Department of Mathematics
Universitätsplatz 2
D-39106 Magdeburg
henk@mail.math.uni-magdeburg.de
http://www.math.uni-magdeburg.de/~henk