Plaited polyhedra (Q1777529)

The motivation for this paper is the rattan ball, which is made by plaiting rattan bands. The balls have twelve pentagon holes and twenty point holes, where three bands meet. These balls look like dodecahedra. The rattan balls are used to play a traditional game involving players standing in a circle, with the aim of keeping the ball aloft with any part of the body except the hands. It is believed that the game originated 500 years ago in Malaysia, and it is practiced in other South East Asian countries. After the Second World War, the game became popular in the West. In this very interesting and rich paper, the author analyzes the basic nature of the plaiting method used for the rattan ball. By trying to construct a tighter ball and a curvature in a mat, a truncated icosahedron, with twelve pentagonal and twenty hexagonal faces [soccer ball] is obtained. By requiring that plaited balls satisfy certain symmetry requirements, the author gets the object of his studies, the plaited polyhedra. He obtains graphical representation of these polyhedra and a basic theorem, proving that any plaited balls as he defined, having only pentagonal and hexagonal holes, have exactly twelve pentagonal holes. The graphical representation also allows to obtain a systematic approach to the distribution of the pentagonal holes. The author develops a methodology for systematic enumeration of all possible plaited polyhedra.