In geometry, a space-filling polyhedron is a polyhedron that can be used to fill all of three-dimensional space via translations, rotations and/or reflections, where filling means that; taken together, all the instances of the polyhedron constitute a partition of three-space. Any periodic tiling or honeycomb of three-space can in fact be generated by translating a primitive cell polyhedron.
If a polygon can tile the plane, its prism is space-filling; examples include the cube, triangular prism, and the hexagonal prism. Any parallelepiped tessellates Euclidean 3-space, as do the five parallelohedra including the cube, hexagonal prism, truncated octahedron, and rhombic dodecahedron. Other space-filling polyhedra include the plesiohedra and stereohedra, polyhedra whose tilings have symmetries taking every tile to every other tile, including the gyrobifastigium, the triakis truncated tetrahedron, and the trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron.
The cube is the only Platonic solid that can fill space, although a tiling that combines tetrahedra and octahedra (the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb) is possible. Although the regular tetrahedron cannot fill space, other tetrahedra can, including the Goursat tetrahedra derived from the cube, and the Hill tetrahedra.
References
- Space-Filling Polyhedron, MathWorld
- Arthur L. Loeb (1991). "Space-filling Polyhedra". Space Structures. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser. pp. 127–132. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0437-4_16. ISBN 978-1-4612-0437-4.
- Category:Space-filling polyhedra
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