In Euclidean geometry, a Platonic solid is a regular, convex polyhedron. The faces are congruent, regular polygons, with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex. There are exactly five solids which meet those criteria; each is named according to its number of faces.
| Tetrahedron (four faces) |
Cube or hexahedron (six faces) |
Octahedron (eight faces) |
Dodecahedron (twelve faces) |
Icosahedron (twenty faces) |
The aesthetic beauty and symmetry of the Platonic solids have made them a favorite subject of geometers for thousands of years. They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who theorized that the classical elements were constructed from the regular solids.
Read more about Platonic Solid: History, Combinatorial Properties, Classification, In Nature and Technology
Famous quotes containing the words platonic and/or solid:
“Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all Platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)