English

Platonic solids in $\mathbb Z^3$

Number Theory 2009-10-12 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

Extending previous results on a characterization of all equilateral triangle in space having vertices with integer coordinates ("in Z3\mathbb Z^3"), we look at the problem of characterizing all regular polyhedra (Platonic Solids) with the same property. To summarize, we show first that there is no regular icosahedron/ dodecahedron in Z3\mathbb Z^3. On the other hand, there is a finite (6 or 12) class of regular tetrahedra in Z3\mathbb Z^3, associated naturally to each nontrivial solution (a,b,c,d)(a,b,c,d) of the Diophantine equation a2+b2+c2=3d2a^2+b^2+c^2=3d^2 and for every nontrivial integer solution (m,n,k)(m,n,k) of the equation m2mn+n2=k2m^2-mn+n^2=k^2. Every regular tetrahedron in Z3\mathbb Z^3 belongs, up to an integer translation and/or rotation, to one of these classes. We then show that each such tetrahedron can be completed to a cube with integer coordinates. The study of regular octahedra is reduced to the cube case via the duality between the two. This work allows one to basically give a description the orthogonal group O(3,Q)O(3,\mathbb Q) in terms of the seven integer parameters satisfying the two relations mentioned above.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0910.1722,
  title  = {Platonic solids in $\mathbb Z^3$},
  author = {Eugen J. Ionascu and Andrei Markov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.1722},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Eight pages with seven figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:56:16.476Z