# Triakis octahedron

In geometry, a triakis octahedron (or trigonal trisoctahedron[1] or kisoctahedron[2]) is an Archimedean dual solid, or a Catalan solid. Its dual is the truncated cube.

Triakis octahedron

TypeCatalan solid
Coxeter diagram
Conway notationkO
Face typeV3.8.8
isosceles triangle
Faces24
Edges36
Vertices14
Vertices by type8{3}+6{8}
Symmetry groupOh, B3, [4,3], (*432)
Rotation groupO, [4,3]+, (432)
Dihedral angle147°21′00″
arccos(−3 + 82/17)
Propertiesconvex, face-transitive

Truncated cube
(dual polyhedron)

Net

It can be seen as an octahedron with triangular pyramids added to each face; that is, it is the Kleetope of the octahedron. It is also sometimes called a trisoctahedron, or, more fully, trigonal trisoctahedron. Both names reflect the fact that it has three triangular faces for every face of an octahedron. The tetragonal trisoctahedron is another name for the deltoidal icositetrahedron, a different polyhedron with three quadrilateral faces for every face of an octahedron.

This convex polyhedron is topologically similar to the concave stellated octahedron. They have the same face connectivity, but the vertices are in different relative distances from the center.

If its shorter edges have length 1, its surface area and volume are:

{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}A&=3{\sqrt {7+4{\sqrt {2}}}}\\V&={\frac {3+2{\sqrt {2}}}{2}}\end{aligned}}}

## Orthogonal projections

The triakis octahedron has three symmetry positions, two located on vertices, and one mid-edge:

Projectivesymmetry Triakisoctahedron Truncatedcube [2] [4] [6]

## Cultural references

The triakis octahedron is one of a family of duals to the uniform polyhedra related to the cube and regular octahedron.

The triakis octahedron is a part of a sequence of polyhedra and tilings, extending into the hyperbolic plane. These face-transitive figures have (*n32) reflectional symmetry.

The triakis octahedron is also a part of a sequence of polyhedra and tilings, extending into the hyperbolic plane. These face-transitive figures have (*n42) reflectional symmetry.

## References

1. "Clipart tagged: 'forms'". etc.usf.edu.
2. Conway, Symmetries of things, p.284
• Williams, Robert (1979). The Geometrical Foundation of Natural Structure: A Source Book of Design. Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-23729-X. (Section 3-9)
• Wenninger, Magnus (1983), Dual Models, Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511569371, ISBN 978-0-521-54325-5, MR 0730208 (The thirteen semiregular convex polyhedra and their duals, Page 17, Triakisoctahedron)
• The Symmetries of Things 2008, John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, Chaim Goodman-Strass, ISBN 978-1-56881-220-5 (Chapter 21, Naming the Archimedean and Catalan polyhedra and tilings, page 284, Triakis octahedron)