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For the academic journal, see Tetrahedron (journal).
In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra) is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. A regular tetrahedron is one in which the four triangles are regular, or "equilateral", and is one of the Platonic solids. The tetrahedron is the only convex polyhedron that has four faces.[1] The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point. In the case of a tetrahedron the base is a triangle (any of the four faces can be considered the base), so a tetrahedron is also known as a triangular pyramid. Like all convex polyhedra, a tetrahedron can be folded from a single sheet of paper. It has two nets.[1] For any tetrahedron there exists a sphere (the circumsphere) such that the tetrahedron's vertices lie on the sphere. [edit] Cartesian coordinates of a regular tetrahedronThe following Cartesian coordinates define the vertices of a tetrahedron with edge-length 2√2, centered at the origin:
[edit] Formulas for regular tetrahedronFor a regular tetrahedron of edge length a:
Note that with respect to the base plane the slope of a face ( [edit] VolumeThe volume of a tetrahedron is given by the pyramid volume formula: where A0 is the area of the base and h the height from the base to the apex. This applies for each of the four choices of the base, so the distances from the apexes to the opposite faces are inversely proportional to the areas of these faces. For a tetrahedron with vertices a = (a1, a2, a3), b = (b1, b2, b3), c = (c1, c2, c3), and d = (d1, d2, d3), the volume is (1/6)·|det(a−b, b−c, c−d)|, or any other combination of pairs of vertices that form a simply connected graph. This can be rewritten using a dot product and a cross product, yielding If the origin of the coordinate system is chosen to coincide with vertex d, then d = 0, so where a, b, and c represent three edges that meet at one vertex, and The triple scalar can be represented by the following determinants:
where Given the distances between the vertices of a tetrahedron the volume can be computed using the Cayley–Menger determinant: where the subscripts [edit] Distance between the edgesAny two opposite edges of a tetrahedron lie on two skew lines. If the closest pair of points between these two lines are points in the edges, they define the distance between the edges; otherwise, the distance between the edges equals that between one of the endpoints and the opposite edge. Let d be the distance between the skew lines formed by opposite edges a and b-c as calculated in [4]. Then another volume formula is given by [edit] Three-dimensional properties of a generalized tetrahedronAs with triangle geometry, there is a similar set of three-dimensional geometric properties for a tetrahedron. A generalized tetrahedron has an insphere, circumsphere, medial tetrahedron, and exspheres. It has respective centers such as incenter, circumcenter, excenters, Spieker center and points such as a centroid. However, there is generally no orthocenter in the sense of intersecting altitudes. There is an equivalent sphere to the triangular nine point circle that is the circumsphere of the medial tetrahedron; however, its circumsphere does not generally pass through the base points of the altitudes of the reference tetrahedron.[5] To resolve these inconsistencies, a substitute center known as the Monge point that always exists for a generalized tetrahedron is introduced. This point was first identified by Gaspard Monge. For tetrahedra where the altitudes do intersect, the Monge point and the orthocenter coincide. The Monge point is defined as the point where the six midplanes of a tetrahedron intersect. A midplane is defined as a plane that is orthogonal to an edge joining any two vertices that also contains the centroid of an opposite edge formed by joining the other two vertices. An orthogonal line dropped from the Monge point to any face is coplanar with two other orthogonal lines to the same face. The first is an altitude dropped from a corresponding vertex to the chosen face. The second is an orthogonal line to the chosen face that passes through the orthocenter of that face. This orthogonal line through the Monge point lies mid way between the altitude and the orthocentric orthogonal line. The Monge point, centroid and circumcenter of a tetrahedron are colinear and form the Euler line of the tetrahedron. However, unlike the triangle, the centroid of a tetrahedron lies at the midpoint of its Monge point and circumcenter. There is an equivalent sphere to the triangular nine-point circle for the generalized tetrahedron. It is the circumsphere of its medial tetrahedron. It is a twelve point sphere centered at the circumcenter of the medial tetrahedron. By definition it passes through the centroids of the four faces of the reference tetrahedron. It passes through four substitute Euler points that are located at a distance of 1/3 of the way from M, the Monge point, toward each of the four vertices. Finally it passes through the four base points of orthogonal lines dropped from each Euler point to the face not containing the vertex that generated the Euler point.[6] If T represents the center of the twelve-point sphere, then it also lies on the Euler line. However, unlike its triangular counterpart, the center lies 1/3 of the way from the Monge point M towards the circumcenter. Also, an orthogonal line through T to a chosen face is coplanar with two other orthogonal lines to the same face. The first is an orthogonal line passing through the corresponding Euler point to the chosen face. The second is an orthogonal line passing through the centroid of the chosen face. This orthogonal line through the twelve-point center lies midway between the Euler point orthogonal line and the centroidal orthogonal line. Furthermore, for any face, the twelve-point center lies at the mid point of the corresponding Euler point and the orthocenter for that face. The radius of the twelve-point sphere is 1/3 of the circumradius of the reference tetrahedron. If OABC forms a generalized tetrahedron with a vertex O as the origin and vectors and the radius of the circumsphere is given by: which gives the radius of the twelve-point sphere: where: The vector position of various centers are given as follows: The centroid The circumcenter The Monge point The Euler line relationships are: where Also: and: [edit] Geometric relationsA tetrahedron is a 3-simplex. Unlike the case of the other Platonic solids, all the vertices of a regular tetrahedron are equidistant from each other (they are the only possible arrangement of four equidistant points in 3-dimensional space). A tetrahedron is a triangular pyramid, and the regular tetrahedron is self-dual. A regular tetrahedron can be embedded inside a cube in two ways such that each vertex is a vertex of the cube, and each edge is a diagonal of one of the cube's faces. For one such embedding, the Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are
For the other tetrahedron (which is dual to the first), reverse all the signs. The volume of this tetrahedron is 1/3 the volume of the cube. Combining both tetrahedra gives a regular polyhedral compound called the stella octangula, whose interior is an octahedron. Correspondingly, a regular octahedron is the result of cutting off, from a regular tetrahedron, four regular tetrahedra of half the linear size (i.e., rectifying the tetrahedron). The above embedding divides the cube into five tetrahedra, one of which is regular. In fact, 5 is the minimum number of tetrahedra required to compose a cube. Inscribing tetrahedra inside the regular compound of five cubes gives two more regular compounds, containing five and ten tetrahedra. Regular tetrahedra cannot tessellate space by themselves, although this result seems likely enough that Aristotle claimed it was possible. However, two regular tetrahedra can be combined with an octahedron, giving a rhombohedron which can tile space. However, there is at least one irregular tetrahedron of which copies can tile space. If one relaxes the requirement that the tetrahedra be all the same shape, one can tile space using only tetrahedra in various ways. For example, one can divide an octahedron into four identical tetrahedra and combine them again with two regular ones. (As a side-note: these two kinds of tetrahedron have the same volume.) The tetrahedron is unique among the uniform polyhedra in possessing no parallel faces. [edit] Related polyhedraA truncation process applied to the tetrahedron produces a series of uniform polyhedra. Truncating edges down to points produces the octahedron as a rectified tetahedron. The process completes as a birectification, reduceing the original faces down to points, and producing the self-dual tetrahedron once again.
[edit] Intersecting tetrahedraAn interesting polyhedron can be constructed from five intersecting tetrahedra. This compound of five tetrahedra has been known for hundreds of years. It comes up regularly in the world of origami. Joining the twenty vertices would form a regular dodecahedron. There are both left-handed and right-handed forms which are mirror images of each other. [edit] Isometries[edit] Isometries of regular tetrahedraThe vertices of a cube can be grouped into two groups of four, each forming a regular tetrahedron (see above, and also animation, showing one of the two tetrahedra in the cube). The symmetries of a regular tetrahedron correspond to half of those of a cube: those which map the tetrahedrons to themselves, and not to each other. The tetrahedron is the only Platonic solid that is not mapped to itself by point inversion. The regular tetrahedron has 24 isometries, forming the symmetry group Td, isomorphic to S4. They can be categorized as follows:
[edit] Isometries of irregular tetrahedraThe isometries of an irregular tetrahedron depend on the geometry of the tetrahedron, with 7 cases possible. In each case a 3-dimensional point group is formed.
[edit] A law of sines for tetrahedra and the space of all shapes of tetrahedraA corollary of the usual law of sines is that in a tetrahedron with vertices O, A, B, C, we have One may view the two sides of this identity as corresponding to clockwise and counterclockwise orientations of the surface. Putting any of the four vertices in the role of O yields four such identities, but in a sense at most three of them are independent: If the "clockwise" sides of three of them are multiplied and the product is inferred to be equal to the product of the "counterclockwise" sides of the same three identities, and then common factors are cancelled from both sides, the result is the fourth identity. One reason to be interested in this "independence" relation is this: It is widely known that three angles are the angles of some triangle if and only if their sum is a half-circle. What condition on 12 angles is necessary and sufficient for them to be the 12 angles of some tetrahedron? Clearly the sum of the angles of any side of the tetrahedron must be a half-circle. Since there are four such triangles, there are four such constraints on sums of angles, and the number of degrees of freedom is thereby reduced from 12 to 8. The four relations given by this sine law further reduce the number of degrees of freedom, not from 8 down to 4, but only from 8 down to 5, since the fourth constraint is not independent of the first three. Thus the space of all shapes of tetrahedra is 5-dimensional. [edit] Applications The ammonium ion is tetrahedral
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