Truncated icosahedron facts for kids
A truncated icosahedron is a special 3D shape called an Archimedean solid. Imagine a regular icosahedron, which is a shape with 20 flat faces, all of them triangles. When you "truncate" it, you are essentially cutting off its corners.
When the corners of a regular icosahedron are cut off, each corner turns into a pentagon (a shape with five sides). The original triangular faces become hexagons (shapes with six sides). A truncated icosahedron ends up having 12 regular pentagons and 20 hexagons. It also has 60 corners (called vertices) and 90 edges (where the faces meet).
Truncated Icosahedra in Real Life
You might be surprised how often you see this shape around you!
Fullerene Molecules
One cool example is a tiny molecule called Fullerene. This molecule is made of 60 carbon atoms and looks exactly like a truncated icosahedron. Scientists find these molecules very interesting!
Soccer Balls
Most soccer balls are designed to look like a truncated icosahedron. If you look closely at a soccer ball, you'll see it's made of black pentagons and white hexagons stitched together. This shape helps the ball roll smoothly and makes it strong.
Images for kids
-
An Icosahedron
-
Piero della Francesca's drawing of a truncated icosahedron from his old book De quinque corporibus regularibus
-
A robot friend
.jpg)
