A polyhedron is said to be convex if a line between any two of its vertices lies either within its interior or on its boundary, and additionally, if no two faces are coplanar (lying in the same plane) and no two edges are collinear (segments of the same line), it can be considered as being strictly convex.2
Of the eight convex deltahedra, three are Platonic solids and five are Johnson solids. They are:3
The number of possible convex deltahedrons was given by Rausenberger (1915), using the fact that multiplying the number of faces by three results in each edge is shared by two faces, by which substituting this to Euler's polyhedron formula. In addition, it may show that a polyhedron with eighteen equilateral triangles is mathematically possible, although it is impossible to construct it geometrically. Rausenberger named these solids as the convex pseudoregular polyhedra.4
Summarizing the examples above, the deltahedra can be conclusively defined as the class of polyhedra whose faces are equilateral triangles.5 Another definition by Bernal (1964) is similar to the previous one, in which he was interested in the shapes of holes left in irregular close-packed arrangements of spheres. It is stated as a convex polyhedron with equilateral triangular faces that can be formed by the centers of a collection of congruent spheres, whose tangencies represent polyhedron edges, and such that there is no room to pack another sphere inside the cage created by this system of spheres. Because of this restriction, some polyhedrons may not be included as a deltahedron: the triangular bipyramid (as forming two tetrahedral holes rather than a single hole), pentagonal bipyramid (because the spheres for its apexes interpenetrate, so it cannot occur in sphere packings), and regular icosahedron (because it has interior room for another sphere).6
Most convex deltahedra can be found in the study of chemistry. For example, they are categorized as the closo polyhedron in the study of polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory.7 Other applications of deltahedra—excluding the regular icosahedron—are the visualization of an atom cluster surrounding a central atom as a polyhedron in the study of chemical compounds: regular tetrahedron represents the tetrahedral molecular geometry, triangular bipyramid represents trigonal bipyramidal molecular geometry, regular octahedron represents the octahedral molecular geometry, pentagonal bipyramid represents the pentagonal bipyramidal molecular geometry, gyroelongated square bipyramid represents the bicapped square antiprismatic molecular geometry, triaugmented triangular prism represents the tricapped trigonal prismatic molecular geometry, and snub disphenoid represents the dodecahedral molecular geometry.8
A non-convex deltahedron is a deltahedron that does not possess convexity, thus it has either coplanar faces or collinear edges. There are infinitely many non-convex deltahedra.9 Some examples are stella octangula, the third stellation of a regular icosahedron, and Boerdijk–Coxeter helix.10
There are subclasses of non-convex deltahedra. Cundy (1952) shows that they may be discovered by finding the number of varying vertex's types. A set of vertices is considered the same type as long as there are subgroups of the polyhedron's same group transitive on the set. Cundy shows that the great icosahedron is the only non-convex deltahedron with a single type of vertex. There are seventeen non-convex deltahedra with two types of vertex, and soon the other eleven deltahedra were later added by Olshevsky,11 Other subclasses are the isohedral deltahedron that was later discovered by both McNeill and Shephard (2000),12 and the spiral deltahedron constructed by the strips of equilateral triangles was discovered by Trigg (1978).13
Cundy (1952)Cromwell (1997), p. 75Trigg (1978) - Cundy, H. Martyn (1952), "Deltahedra", Mathematical Gazette, 36 (318): 263–266, doi:10.2307/3608204, JSTOR 3608204 https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3608204 ↩
Litchenberg (1988), p. 262Boissonnat & Yvinec (1989) - Litchenberg, D. R. (1988), "Pyramids, Prisms, Antiprisms, and Deltahedra", The Mathematics Teacher, 81 (4): 261–265, doi:10.5951/MT.81.4.0261, JSTOR 27965792 https://doi.org/10.5951%2FMT.81.4.0261 ↩
Trigg (1978)Litchenberg (1988), p. 263Freudenthal & van der Waerden (1947) - Trigg, Charles W. (1978), "An Infinite Class of Deltahedra", Mathematics Magazine, 51 (1): 55–57, doi:10.2307/2689647, JSTOR 2689647 https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2689647 ↩
Rausenberger (1915)Litchenberg (1988), p. 263 - Rausenberger, O. (1915), "Konvexe pseudoreguläre Polyeder", Zeitschrift für mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht, 46: 135–142 ↩
Bernal (1964). - Bernal, J. D. (1964), "The Bakerian Lecture, 1962. The Structure of Liquids", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 280 (1382): 299–322, Bibcode:1964RSPSA.280..299B, doi:10.1098/rspa.1964.0147, JSTOR 2415872, S2CID 178710030 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964RSPSA.280..299B ↩
Kharas & Dahl (1988), p. 8. - Kharas, K. C. C.; Dahl, L. F. (1988), "Ligand-Stabilized Metal Clusters: Structure, Bonding, Fluxionarity, and the Metallic State", in Prigogine, I.; Rice, S. A. (eds.), Evolution of Size Effects in Chemical Dynamics Part 2: Advances in Chemical Physics Volume LXX, John Wiley & Sons, p. 8, ISBN 978-0-470-14180-9 https://books.google.com/books?id=ur7Nqe4ueBYC ↩
Burdett, Hoffmann & Fay (1978)Gillespie & Hargittai (2013), p. 152Kepert (1982), p. 7–21Petrucci, Harwood & Herring (2002), p. 413–414, See table 11.1.Remhov & Černý (2021), p. 270 - Burdett, Jeremy K.; Hoffmann, Roald; Fay, Robert C. (1978), "Eight-Coordination", Inorganic Chemistry, 17 (9): 2553–2568, doi:10.1021/ic50187a041 https://doi.org/10.1021%2Fic50187a041 ↩
Trigg (1978)Eppstein (2021) - Trigg, Charles W. (1978), "An Infinite Class of Deltahedra", Mathematics Magazine, 51 (1): 55–57, doi:10.2307/2689647, JSTOR 2689647 https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2689647 ↩
Pedersen & Hyde (2018)Weils (1991), p. 78 - Pedersen, M. C.; Hyde, S. T. (2018), "Polyhedra and packings from hyperbolic honeycombs", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (27): 6905–6910, Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.6905P, doi:10.1073/pnas.1720307115, PMC 6142264, PMID 29925600 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018PNAS..115.6905P ↩
Cundy (1952)OlshevskyTsuruta et al. (2015) - Cundy, H. Martyn (1952), "Deltahedra", Mathematical Gazette, 36 (318): 263–266, doi:10.2307/3608204, JSTOR 3608204 https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3608204 ↩
McNeillShephard (2000)Tsuruta et al. (2015) - McNeill, J., Isohedral Deltahedra ↩
Trigg (1978)Tsuruta et al. (2015) - Trigg, Charles W. (1978), "An Infinite Class of Deltahedra", Mathematics Magazine, 51 (1): 55–57, doi:10.2307/2689647, JSTOR 2689647 https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2689647 ↩