English

Flat Zipper-Unfolding Pairs for Platonic Solids

Computational Geometry 2010-10-21 v4 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

We show that four of the five Platonic solids' surfaces may be cut open with a Hamiltonian path along edges and unfolded to a polygonal net each of which can "zipper-refold" to a flat doubly covered parallelogram, forming a rather compact representation of the surface. Thus these regular polyhedra have particular flat "zipper pairs." No such zipper pair exists for a dodecahedron, whose Hamiltonian unfoldings are "zip-rigid." This report is primarily an inventory of the possibilities, and raises more questions than it answers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.2450,
  title  = {Flat Zipper-Unfolding Pairs for Platonic Solids},
  author = {Joseph O'Rourke},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.2450},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

15 pages, 14 figures, 8 references. v2: Added one new figure. v3: Replaced Fig. 13 to remove a duplicate unfolding, reducing from 21 to 20 the distinct unfoldings. v4: Replaced Fig. 13 again, 18 distinct unfoldings

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:27:27.370Z