A hexadecachoron
In four dimensional
geometry
, a
16-cell
, is a
regular convex polychoron
, or
polytope
existing in four dimensions. It is also known as the
hexadecachoron
. It is one of the six
regular convex polychora
first described by the Swiss mathematician
Ludwig Schlafli
in the mid-19th century.
Conway
calls it an
orthoplex
for
orthant complex
, as well as the entire class of
cross-polytopes
.
The hexadecachoron is a member of the family of polytopes called the
cross-polytopes
, which exist in all dimensions. As such, its dual polychoron is the
tesseract
(the 4-dimensional hypercube).
It is bounded by 16
cells
, all of which are regular
tetrahedra
. It has 32 triangular faces, 24 edges, and 8 vertices. The 24 edges bound 6 squares lying in the 6 coordinate planes.
The eight vertices of the hexadecachoron are (±1, 0, 0, 0), (0, ±1, 0, 0), (0, 0, ±1, 0), (0, 0, 0, ±1). All vertices are connected by edges except opposite pairs.
The
Schlafli symbol
of the hexadecachoron is {3,3,4}. Its
vertex figure
is a regular octahedron. There are 8 tetrahedra, 12 triangles, and 6 edges meeting at every vertex. Its
edge figure
is a square. There are 4 tetrahedra and 4 triangles meeting at every edge.
There is a lower symmetry form of the
16-cell
, called a
demitesseract
or
4-demicube
, a member of the
demihypercube
family, and represented by h{4,3,3}, and can be drawn bicolored with alternating
tetrahedral
cells.
-
-
-
A skew orthogonal projection inside its regular
octagonal
Petrie polygon
, connecting all vertices except opposite ones.
-
The 16-cell has two Wythoff constructions, a regular form and alternated form, shown here as
nets
, the second being represented by alternately two colors of tetrahedral cells.
-
A 3D projection of a 16-cell performing a
double rotation
about two orthogonal planes.
One can
tessellate
4-dimensional
Euclidean space
by regular 16-cells. This is called the
hexadecachoric honeycomb
and has
Schlafli symbol
{3,3,4,3}. The dual tessellation,
icositetrachoric honeycomb
, {3,4,3,3}, is made of by regular
24-cells
. Together with the
tesseractic honeycomb
{4,3,3,4}, these are the only three
regular tessellations
of
R
4
. Each 16-cell has 16 neighbors with which it shares an octahedron, 24 neighbors with which it shares only an edge, and 72 neighbors with which it shares only a single point. Twenty-four 16-cells meet at any given vertex in this tessellation.
The cell-first parallel projection of the 16-cell into 3-space has a
cubical
envelope. The closest and farthest cells are projected to inscribed tetrahedra within the cube, corresponding with the two possible ways to inscribe a regular tetrahedron in a cube. Surrounding each of these tetrahedra are 4 other (non-regular) tetrahedral volumes that are the images of the 4 surrounding tetrahedral cells, filling up the space between the inscribed tetrahedron and the cube. The remaining 6 cells are projected onto the square faces of the cube. In this projection of the 16-cell, all its edges lie on the faces of the cubical envelope.
The cell-first perspective projection of the 16-cell into 3-space has a
triakis tetrahedral
envelope. The layout of the cells within this envelope are analogous to that of the cell-first parallel projection.
The vertex-first parallel
projection
of the 16-cell into 3-space has an
octahedral
envelope
. This octahedron can be divided into 8 tetrahedral volumes, by cutting along the coordinate planes. Each of these volumes is the image of a pair of cells in the 16-cell. The closest vertex of the 16-cell to the viewer projects onto the center of the octahedron.
Finally the edge-first parallel projection has a shortened octahedral envelope, and the face-first parallel projection has a
hexagonal bipyramidal
envelope.