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med_catToday's word is brought to you by prettygoodword , who posted this back on March 6th:
rhombicosidodecahedron - n., an Archimedean solid with 62 regular faces (20 triangles, 30 squares, and 12 pentagons).
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Okay, so it's probably just as much cheating to pull brobdingnagian words from solid geometry as it is from chemistry, but I just love this one -- so fun to say, and so fun to look at. Technically, there are two solids called a rhombicosidodecahedron, of which this is the small rhombicosidodecahedron -- the great rhombicosidodecahedron also has 62 faces, but with 30 squares, 20 hexagons, and 12 decagons. I'm not going to parse out the elements -- er, um, I mean, doing so is left as an exercise for the reader. But I will mention that the name was coined in Latin by Johannes Kepler (in The Harmony of the World, 1619).
---L.
~~~
This made me recall Marianne Moore's poem "The Icosasphere", which you can find, along with mathematical commentary, at the Poetry and Mathematics blog here
And you can read more about the icosahedron, the dodecahedron, and their various sub-categories and stellations, if you wish :)
prettygoodword , who posted this back on March 6th:rhombicosidodecahedron - n., an Archimedean solid with 62 regular faces (20 triangles, 30 squares, and 12 pentagons).
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Okay, so it's probably just as much cheating to pull brobdingnagian words from solid geometry as it is from chemistry, but I just love this one -- so fun to say, and so fun to look at. Technically, there are two solids called a rhombicosidodecahedron, of which this is the small rhombicosidodecahedron -- the great rhombicosidodecahedron also has 62 faces, but with 30 squares, 20 hexagons, and 12 decagons. I'm not going to parse out the elements -- er, um, I mean, doing so is left as an exercise for the reader. But I will mention that the name was coined in Latin by Johannes Kepler (in The Harmony of the World, 1619).
---L.
~~~
This made me recall Marianne Moore's poem "The Icosasphere", which you can find, along with mathematical commentary, at the Poetry and Mathematics blog here
And you can read more about the icosahedron, the dodecahedron, and their various sub-categories and stellations, if you wish :)
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