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Antiprisms


In geometry, an n-sided antiprism is a polyhedron composed of two parallel copies of some particular n-sided polygon, connected by an alternating band of triangles. Antiprisms are a subclass of the prismatoids and are a (degenerate) type of snub polyhedra.

Antiprisms are similar to prisms except the bases are twisted relative to each other, and that the side faces are triangles, rather than quadrilaterals.

In the case of a regular n-sided base, one usually considers the case where its copy is twisted by an angle 180°/n. Extra regularity is obtained when the line connecting the base centers is perpendicular to the base planes, making it a right antiprism. As faces, it has the two n-gonal bases and, connecting those bases, 2n isosceles triangles.

A uniform antiprism has, apart from the base faces, 2n equilateral triangles as faces. As a class, the uniform antiprisms form an infinite series of vertex-uniform polyhedra, as do the uniform prisms. For n = 2 we have as degenerate case the regular tetrahedron as a digonal antiprism, and for n = 3 the non-degenerate regular octahedron as a triangular antiprism.

The dual polyhedra of the antiprisms are the trapezohedra. Their existence was discussed and their name was coined by Johannes Kepler, though it is possible that they were previously known to Archimedes as they satisfy the same conditions on vertices as the Archimedean solids.


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