The Archimedean Solids & Their Dual Catalan Solids

The Archimedean solids and their duals the Catalan solids are less well known than the Platonic solids.  Whereas the Platonic solids are composed of one shape, these forms that Archimedes wrote about are made of at least two different shapes, all forming identical vertices.  They are 13 polyhedra of this type.  And since each solid has a ‘dual’ there are also 13 Catalan solids.  There are 26 in total.  If  our two-dimensional letters of the alpha-bet were three dimensional forms, these solids would be a great representation of our language.

Continue reading