Rectification (geometry)

(Redirected from Birectification)

In Euclidean geometry, rectification, also known as critical truncation or complete-truncation, is the process of truncating a polytope by marking the midpoints of all its edges, and cutting off its vertices at those points.[1] The resulting polytope will be bounded by vertex figure facets and the rectified facets of the original polytope.

A rectified cube is a cuboctahedron – edges reduced to vertices, and vertices expanded into new faces
A birectified cube is an octahedron – faces are reduced to points and new faces are centered on the original vertices.
A rectified cubic honeycomb – edges reduced to vertices, and vertices expanded into new cells.

A rectification operator is sometimes denoted by the letter r with a Schläfli symbol. For example, r{4,3} is the rectified cube, also called a cuboctahedron, and also represented as . And a rectified cuboctahedron rr{4,3} is a rhombicuboctahedron, and also represented as .

Conway polyhedron notation uses a for ambo as this operator. In graph theory this operation creates a medial graph.

The rectification of any regular self-dual polyhedron or tiling will result in another regular polyhedron or tiling with a tiling order of 4, for example the tetrahedron {3,3} becoming an octahedron {3,4}. As a special case, a square tiling {4,4} will turn into another square tiling {4,4} under a rectification operation.

Example of rectification as a final truncation to an edge

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Rectification is the final point of a truncation process. For example, on a cube this sequence shows four steps of a continuum of truncations between the regular and rectified form:

 

Higher degree rectifications

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Higher degree rectification can be performed on higher-dimensional regular polytopes. The highest degree of rectification creates the dual polytope. A rectification truncates edges to points. A birectification truncates faces to points. A trirectification truncates cells to points, and so on.

Example of birectification as a final truncation to a face

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This sequence shows a birectified cube as the final sequence from a cube to the dual where the original faces are truncated down to a single point:

 

In polygons

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The dual of a polygon is the same as its rectified form. New vertices are placed at the center of the edges of the original polygon.

In polyhedra and plane tilings

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Each platonic solid and its dual have the same rectified polyhedron. (This is not true of polytopes in higher dimensions.)

The rectified polyhedron turns out to be expressible as the intersection of the original platonic solid with an appropriately scaled concentric version of its dual. For this reason, its name is a combination of the names of the original and the dual:

Examples

Family Parent Rectification Dual
     
[p,q]
                 
[3,3]  
Tetrahedron
 
Octahedron
 
Tetrahedron
[4,3]  
Cube
 
Cuboctahedron
 
Octahedron
[5,3]  
Dodecahedron
 
Icosidodecahedron
 
Icosahedron
[6,3]  
Hexagonal tiling
 
Trihexagonal tiling
 
Triangular tiling
[7,3]  
Order-3 heptagonal tiling
 
Triheptagonal tiling
 
Order-7 triangular tiling
[4,4]  
Square tiling
 
Square tiling
 
Square tiling
[5,4]  
Order-4 pentagonal tiling
 
Tetrapentagonal tiling
 
Order-5 square tiling

In nonregular polyhedra

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If a polyhedron is not regular, the edge midpoints surrounding a vertex may not be coplanar. However, a form of rectification is still possible in this case: every polyhedron has a polyhedral graph as its 1-skeleton, and from that graph one may form the medial graph by placing a vertex at each edge midpoint of the original graph, and connecting two of these new vertices by an edge whenever they belong to consecutive edges along a common face. The resulting medial graph remains polyhedral, so by Steinitz's theorem it can be represented as a polyhedron.

The Conway polyhedron notation equivalent to rectification is ambo, represented by a. Applying twice aa, (rectifying a rectification) is Conway's expand operation, e, which is the same as Johnson's cantellation operation, t0,2 generated from regular polyhedral and tilings.

In 4-polytopes and 3D honeycomb tessellations

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Each Convex regular 4-polytope has a rectified form as a uniform 4-polytope.

A regular 4-polytope {p,q,r} has cells {p,q}. Its rectification will have two cell types, a rectified {p,q} polyhedron left from the original cells and {q,r} polyhedron as new cells formed by each truncated vertex.

A rectified {p,q,r} is not the same as a rectified {r,q,p}, however. A further truncation, called bitruncation, is symmetric between a 4-polytope and its dual. See Uniform 4-polytope#Geometric derivations.

Examples

Family Parent Rectification Birectification
(Dual rectification)
Trirectification
(Dual)
       
[p,q,r]
       
{p,q,r}
       
r{p,q,r}
       
2r{p,q,r}
       
3r{p,q,r}
[3,3,3]  
5-cell
 
rectified 5-cell
 
rectified 5-cell
 
5-cell
[4,3,3]  
tesseract
 
rectified tesseract
 
Rectified 16-cell
(24-cell)
 
16-cell
[3,4,3]  
24-cell
 
rectified 24-cell
 
rectified 24-cell
 
24-cell
[5,3,3]  
120-cell
 
rectified 120-cell
 
rectified 600-cell
 
600-cell
[4,3,4]  
Cubic honeycomb
 
Rectified cubic honeycomb
 
Rectified cubic honeycomb
 
Cubic honeycomb
[5,3,4]  
Order-4 dodecahedral
 
Rectified order-4 dodecahedral
 
Rectified order-5 cubic
 
Order-5 cubic

Degrees of rectification

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A first rectification truncates edges down to points. If a polytope is regular, this form is represented by an extended Schläfli symbol notation t1{p,q,...} or r{p,q,...}.

A second rectification, or birectification, truncates faces down to points. If regular it has notation t2{p,q,...} or 2r{p,q,...}. For polyhedra, a birectification creates a dual polyhedron.

Higher degree rectifications can be constructed for higher dimensional polytopes. In general an n-rectification truncates n-faces to points.

If an n-polytope is (n-1)-rectified, its facets are reduced to points and the polytope becomes its dual.

Notations and facets

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There are different equivalent notations for each degree of rectification. These tables show the names by dimension and the two type of facets for each.

Facets are edges, represented as {}.

name
{p}
Coxeter diagram t-notation
Schläfli symbol
Vertical Schläfli symbol
Name Facet-1 Facet-2
Parent     t0{p} {p} {}
Rectified     t1{p} {p} {}

Facets are regular polygons.

name
{p,q}
Coxeter diagram t-notation
Schläfli symbol
Vertical Schläfli symbol
Name Facet-1 Facet-2
Parent       =     t0{p,q} {p,q} {p}
Rectified       =     t1{p,q} r{p,q} =   {p} {q}
Birectified       =     t2{p,q} {q,p} {q}

Facets are regular or rectified polyhedra.

name
{p,q,r}
Coxeter diagram t-notation
Schläfli symbol
Extended Schläfli symbol
Name Facet-1 Facet-2
Parent         t0{p,q,r} {p,q,r} {p,q}
Rectified         t1{p,q,r}   = r{p,q,r}   = r{p,q} {q,r}
Birectified
(Dual rectified)
        t2{p,q,r}   = r{r,q,p} {q,r}   = r{q,r}
Trirectified
(Dual)
        t3{p,q,r} {r,q,p} {r,q}

Regular 5-polytopes and 4-space honeycombs

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Facets are regular or rectified 4-polytopes.

name
{p,q,r,s}
Coxeter diagram t-notation
Schläfli symbol
Extended Schläfli symbol
Name Facet-1 Facet-2
Parent           t0{p,q,r,s} {p,q,r,s} {p,q,r}
Rectified           t1{p,q,r,s}   = r{p,q,r,s}   = r{p,q,r} {q,r,s}
Birectified
(Birectified dual)
          t2{p,q,r,s}   = 2r{p,q,r,s}   = r{r,q,p}   = r{q,r,s}
Trirectified
(Rectified dual)
          t3{p,q,r,s}   = r{s,r,q,p} {r,q,p}   = r{s,r,q}
Quadrirectified
(Dual)
          t4{p,q,r,s} {s,r,q,p} {s,r,q}

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Rectification". MathWorld.
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Polyhedron operators
Seed Truncation Rectification Bitruncation Dual Expansion Omnitruncation Alternations
                                                           
                   
t0{p,q}
{p,q}
t01{p,q}
t{p,q}
t1{p,q}
r{p,q}
t12{p,q}
2t{p,q}
t2{p,q}
2r{p,q}
t02{p,q}
rr{p,q}
t012{p,q}
tr{p,q}
ht0{p,q}
h{q,p}
ht12{p,q}
s{q,p}
ht012{p,q}
sr{p,q}