A Congruence Problem for Polyhedra

DOI10.4169/000298910X480081MaRDI QIDQ3058129zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Alexandr Borisov, Mark Dickinson, S. P. Hastings

Publication date 18 November 2010

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.4197

zbMATH Keywords

polyhedronrigidityabstract polyhedron

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Three-dimensional polytopes (52B10) Polyhedra and polytopes; regular figures, division of spaces (51M20) Rigidity and flexibility of structures (aspects of discrete geometry) (52C25)

Abstract: It is well known that to determine a triangle up to congruence requires three measurements: three sides, two sides and the included angle, or one side and two angles. We consider various generalizations of this fact to two and three dimensions. In particular we consider the following question: given a convex polyhedron $P$, how many measurements are required to determine $P$ up to congruence? We show that in general the answer is that the number of measurements required is equal to the number of edges of the polyhedron. However, for many polyhedra fewer measurements suffice; in the case of the unit cube we show that nine carefully chosen measurements are enough. We also prove a number of analogous results for planar polygons. In particular we describe a variety of quadrilaterals, including all rhombi and all rectangles, that can be determined up to congruence with only four measurements, and we prove the existence of $n$-gons requiring only $n$ measurements. Finally, we show that one cannot do better: for any sequence of $n$ distinct points in the plane one needs at least $n$ measurements to determine it up to congruence.

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(7)

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7644071 (Why is no real title available?)
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• Reconstruction of tetrahedra from sets of edge lengths
• ON THE DIMENSIONS OF THE REALIZATION SPACES OF POLYTOPES
• Rigidity, tensegrity, and reconstruction of polytopes under metric constraints
• Polyhedra and commensurability
• Efficient generation of large-scale Pareto-optimal topologies

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