Balancing polyhedra

Length, area, volume and convex sets (aspects of convex geometry) (52A38) Combinatorial properties of polytopes and polyhedra (number of faces, shortest paths, etc.) (52B05) Three-dimensional polytopes (52B10) Statics (70C20)

Abstract: We define the mechanical complexity

C (P)

of a convex polyhedron

P,

interpreted as a homogeneous solid, as the difference between the total number of its faces, edges and vertices and the number of its static equilibria, and the mechanical complexity

C (S, U)

of primary equilibrium classes

(S, U)^{E}

with

S

stable and

U

unstable equilibria as the infimum of the mechanical complexity of all polyhedra in that class. We prove that the mechanical complexity of a class

(S, U)^{E}

with

S, U > 1

is the minimum of

2 (f + v - S - U)

over all polyhedral pairs

(f, v)

, where a pair of integers is called a polyhedral pair if there is a convex polyhedron with

f

faces and

v

vertices. In particular, we prove that the mechanical complexity of a class

(S, U)^{E}

is zero if, and only if there exists a convex polyhedron with

S

faces and

U

vertices. We also give asymptotically sharp bounds for the mechanical complexity of the monostatic classes

(1, U)^{E}

and

(S, 1)^{E}

, and offer a complexity-dependent prize for the complexity of the G"omb"oc-class

(1, 1)^{E}

.

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