Platonic Solids

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What are Platonic Solids?

A Polyhedron is a solid with flat faces. The word is derived from Greek poly- meaning “many” and -edron meaning “face”.

A Platonic Solid is special type of polyhedron where
each face is the same regular polygon and
the same number of faces meet at each vertex

The Greek philosopher Plato, who was born around 430 B.C., wrote about these five solids in a work called Timaeus. He associated each of the five elements (earth, air, water, fire and ether) with a platonic solid.

Following are the five platonic solids -

1) TETRAHEDRON
Faces: 4 equilateral triangles
Edges: 6
Vertices: 4
Element associated: Earth

2) CUBE
Faces: 6 squares
Edges: 12
Vertices: 8
Element associated: Water

3) OCTAHEDRON
Faces: 8 equilateral triangles
Edges: 12
Vertices: 6
Element associated: Air

4) DODECAHEDRON
Faces: 12 regular pentagons
Edges: 30
Vertices: 20
Element associated: Fire

5) ICOSAHEDRON
Faces: 20 equilateral triangles
Edges: 30
Vertices: ...
... 12
Element associated: Ether

Where do you find these solids in real life?

These polyhedra are everywhere. The tetrahedron, cube, and octahedron all occur naturally in crystal structures.

Many viruses, such as the herpes virus, have the shape of a regular icosahedron. Viral structures are built of repeated identical protein subunits and the icosahedron is the easiest shape to assemble using these subunits.

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