The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb is a quasiregular space-filling tessellation (or honeycomb) in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of alternating regular octahedra and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:2.
Other names include half cubic honeycomb, half cubic cellulation, or tetragonal disphenoidal cellulation. John Horton Conway calls this honeycomb a tetroctahedrille, and its dual a dodecahedrille.
R. Buckminster Fuller combines the two words octahedron and tetrahedron into octet truss, a rhombohedron consisting of one octahedron (or two square pyramids) and two opposite tetrahedra.
A geometric honeycomb is a space-filling of polyhedral or higher-dimensional cells, so that there are no gaps. It is an example of the more general mathematical tiling or tessellation in any number of dimensions.
In this case of 3-space, the cubic honeycomb is alternated, reducing the cubic cells to tetrahedra, and the deleted vertices create octahedral voids. As such it can be represented by an extended Schläfli symbol h{4,3,4} as containing half the vertices of the {4,3,4} cubic honeycomb.
There is a similar honeycomb called gyrated tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb which has layers rotated 60 degrees so half the edges have neighboring rather than alternating tetrahedra and octahedra.
For an alternated cubic honeycomb, with edges parallel to the axes and with an edge length of 1, the Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are: (For all integral values: i,j,k with i+j+keven)
(i, j, k)
Symmetry
There are two reflective constructions and many alternated cubic honeycomb ones; examples:
The alternated cubic honeycomb can be sliced into sections, where new square faces are created from inside of the octahedron. Each slice will contain up and downward facing square pyramids and tetrahedra sitting on their edges. A second slice direction needs no new faces and includes alternating tetrahedral and octahedral. This slab honeycomb is a scaliform honeycomb rather than uniform because it has nonuniform cells.
Projection by folding
The alternated cubic honeycomb can be orthogonally projected into the planar square tiling by a geometric folding operation that maps one pairs of mirrors into each other. The projection of the alternated cubic honeycomb creates two offset copies of the square tiling vertex arrangement of the plane:
The D+ 3 packing can be constructed by the union of two D3 (or A3) lattices. The D+ n packing is only a lattice for even dimensions. The kissing number is 22=4, (2n-1 for n<8, 240 for n=8, and 2n(n-1) for n>8).[4]
The [4,3,4], , Coxeter group generates 15 permutations of uniform honeycombs, 9 with distinct geometry including the alternated cubic honeycomb. The expanded cubic honeycomb (also known as the runcinated tesseractic honeycomb) is geometrically identical to the cubic honeycomb.
It is related to the cantellated cubic honeycomb. Rhombicuboctahedra are reduced to truncated octahedra, and cubes are reduced to truncated tetrahedra.
The runcic cubic honeycomb or runcic cubic cellulation is a uniform space-filling tessellation (or honeycomb) in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of rhombicuboctahedra, cubes, and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:1:2. Its vertex figure is a triangular frustum, with a tetrahedron on one end, cube on the opposite end, and three rhombicuboctahedra around the trapezoidal sides.
The dual of a runcic cubic honeycomb is called a quarter cubille, with Coxeter diagram, with faces in 2 of 4 hyperplanes of the , [4,31,1] symmetry fundamental domain.
Cells can be seen as 1/4 of dissected cube, using 4 vertices and the center. Four cells exist around 6 edges, and 3 cells around 3 edges.
The dual to the runcitruncated cubic honeycomb is called a half pyramidille, with Coxeter diagram. Faces exist in 3 of 4 hyperplanes of the [4,31,1], Coxeter group.
Cells are irregular pyramids and can be seen as 1/12 of a cube, or 1/24 of a rhombic dodecahedron, each defined with three corner and the cube center.
Related skew apeirohedra
A related uniform skew apeirohedron exists with the same vertex arrangement, but triangles and square removed. It can be seen as truncated tetrahedra and truncated cubes augmented together.
It is vertex-uniform with 8 tetrahedra and 6 octahedra around each vertex.
It is not edge-uniform. All edges have 2 tetrahedra and 2 octahedra, but some are alternating, and some are paired.
It can be seen as reflective layers of this layer honeycomb:
Construction by gyration
This is a less symmetric version of another honeycomb, tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, in which each edge is surrounded by alternating tetrahedra and octahedra. Both can be considered as consisting of layers one cell thick, within which the two kinds of cell strictly alternate. Because the faces on the planes separating these layers form a regular pattern of triangles, adjacent layers can be placed so that each octahedron in one layer meets a tetrahedron in the next layer, or so that each cell meets a cell of its own kind (the layer boundary thus becomes a reflection plane). The latter form is called gyrated.
The vertex figure is called a triangular orthobicupola, compared to the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb whose vertex figure cuboctahedron in a lower symmetry is called a triangular gyrobicupola, so the gyro- prefix is reversed in usage.
The elongated alternated cubic honeycomb has the same arrangement of cells at each vertex, but the overall arrangement differs. In the elongated form, each prism meets a tetrahedron at one of its triangular faces and an octahedron at the other; in the gyroelongated form, the prism meets the same kind of deltahedron at each end.
It is vertex-transitive with 3 octahedra, 4 tetrahedra, 6 triangular prisms around each vertex. Each prism meets an octahedron at one end and a tetrahedron at the other.
^For cross-referencing, they are given with list indices from Andreini (1-22), Williams(1-2,9-19), Johnson (11-19, 21-25, 31-34, 41-49, 51-52, 61-65), and Grünbaum(1-28).
John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, Chaim Goodman-Strauss, (2008) The Symmetries of Things, ISBN978-1-56881-220-5 (Chapter 21, Naming the Archimedean and Catalan polyhedra and tilings, Architectonic and Catoptric tessellations, p 292–298, includes all the nonprismatic forms)
George Olshevsky, Uniform Panoploid Tetracombs, Manuscript (2006) (Complete list of 11 convex uniform tilings, 28 convex uniform honeycombs, and 143 convex uniform tetracombs)
Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995, ISBN978-0-471-01003-6[2]
(Paper 22) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi Regular Polytopes I, [Math. Zeit. 46 (1940) 380–407, MR 2,10] (1.9 Uniform space-fillings)
(Paper 24) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes III, [Math. Zeit. 200 (1988) 3-45]
A. Andreini, Sulle reti di poliedri regolari e semiregolari e sulle corrispondenti reti correlative (On the regular and semiregular nets of polyhedra and on the corresponding correlative nets), Mem. Società Italiana della Scienze, Ser.3, 14 (1905) 75–129.
D. M. Y. Sommerville, An Introduction to the Geometry of n Dimensions. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1930. 196 pp. (Dover Publications edition, 1958) Chapter X: The Regular Polytopes