Compound of Thirty Tetrahedra

This is a compound of 30 tetrahedra with all rotational symmetries of an icosahedron. There are 60 symmetries there and for this kind of compound a tetrahedron shares a 2-fold axis with the compound. This way you will get a compound of 30 tetrahedra.

This kind of compound has rotation freedom, and that means that there are infinite many of these by rotating each tetrahedron around the shared 2-fold axis; naturally all with the same amount.

This one is however special, since normally the compound can be divided into 6 compounds of 5 tetrahedra with the same symmetry. This symmetry has a 5-fold symmetry axis without any reflections. For this angle however the subcompound does have reflections.

Another nice feature is that this compound of thirty tetrahedra doesn't have too many facelets and hence it is reasonably easy to build, even though it is quite often hard to build chiral models (i.e. models that only have rotational symmetries).

This model is around 14 cm in diameter, which is a bit more than 5.5 inches, and it was finished just after Christmas in 2023.

The image below shows one subcompound next to the whole compound. In the image the compound on the left has the same orientation as the black subcompound of the model on the right.

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Last Updated

2024-04-09