[Math] the result of truncating Platonic solids

geometryplatonic-solids

Let $P$ denote a Platonic solid. Truncating $P$ at a vertex $v$ consists of marking the midpoints of the edges that touch $v$ and then slicing off a corner of $P$ by the plane that passes through all those points. For each Platonic solid $P$, determine the the polyhedron that results from truncating $P$ simultaneously at each of its vertices.

Now, I had a little difficulty imagining the shapes and their truncations, but this is what I came up with. If we truncate at the midpoint of each edge for all vertices of each Platonic solid, we get its dual polyhedron. So, for the tetrahedron, truncating it in this manner results in another tetrahedron. When you truncate the cube and the octahedron, you get the other Platonic solid. Finally, the same goes for the icosahedron and dodecahedron. Since I am having difficulty envisioning the actual results, I was wondering if you guys could help me out. Also, is there a program I can use to manually do this operation? Thanks!

Best Answer

Here are the 5 Platonic polyhedra together with their truncations. The best polyhedron program that I know is Stella (you can find the site with Google). A trial download is possible. The following images were created by my own program, MathpadDraw which you can download from mathokay.com.

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