Cubopaper
Cubopaper
Cubopaper
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The Cubo-octahedron
http://www.mathematische-basteleien.de/cuboctahedron.htm
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The edges of the cubo-octahedron are 122 centimeters, and that was found in a very
easy way. The base cube is used because the midpoints are taken on one adjacent side. Once the
midpoints are there, they become connected and form a triangle. You can now find the side
length as shown in the picture below.
Figure 3. The Side Length of the Cubo-Octahedron
Figure 3, above, shows how to find the side length in a picture. The orange line, which is
x, represents the length of the cube edge which is 24 centimeters. The line labeled 1/2x is the
segment that connects two midpoints and it is half of x which would be 12 centimeters. Now to
find the side length, the special right triangles postulate of 45-45-90 has to be used. In this
type of triangle, the two legs are always congruent and the hypotenuse is always multiplied by
2 of the legs. Thats why the leg is labeled 1/2x2. So when 12 is multiplied by 2, the
answer is 122 centimeters or 16.9706 centimeters. This number will always be the side
length, even for the triangles.
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The surface area is the sum of the area of all faces of a 3-D model such as the cubooctahedron and shouldnt be confused with volume which is how much space the model takes
up. The method to find the surface area of the cubo-octahedron will be shown below.
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length making the corner pyramid. The 3 outer edges of our corner pyramid
would be 12 cm because it is cut in half due to the cubos midpoint as seen in the
picture to the left. The internal 3 edges are 122 cm due to
the corner triangle being a 45-45-90 as seen to the right.
Now we can move on and find the volume. The triangular
pyramid is a right triangular pyramid because the corners meet at a 90
angle, or a right angle. Now that you have the dimensions, you can find the
volume of it using the formula Vp=(1/3)*Abhp (Let Vp= Volume of a
pyramid, Ab= Area of the base, and hp= height of the pyramid). To make things easier, you can
flip the pyramid over so the base is the right triangle so you dont have to find the height for the
pyramid because the side can be used as a height because it is at a 90 angle and not slanted.
Lets use x= 12 as an external edge because as explained earlier 24/2 is 12. Now the area of the
base of the pyramid needs to be calculated, we can do this easily. Let Apb = Area of the pyramid
base. We will also need the formula for area of a triangle.
Area = *(base)*(height)
We would substitute 12 as the base and height for the formula.
Area=*(12)*(12)
Apb=72 cm2
Now that we have the area and height, the volume can be found:
Vp=(72)(12)
Vp=288 cm3
Now that we have the volume of the corner pyramid we need to find the volume of the cube and
subtract them from each other. Cubes are a simpler task at finding the volume of. First we need
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to find the area of a square, the formula for this is As=b*h (Let As =Area of a square, and
b*h=Base*Height).
Since the side length is given to us is 24 and a cube has equal sides we can just do
As=24*24
As=576 cm2
The volume of a cube has a different formula which is. The formula would be Vc=Abhc (Let
Vc= Volume of a cube, Ab= Area of the base, and Hc= Height of the cube). For this you can
substitute 576 for the area since the area of one square is 576 cm2 and 24 as the height.
Vc=(576)(24)
Vc=13,824 cm3
Now that you have both the volume of the corner piece and of the entire cube, you subtract them
from each other to get the volume of the cubo-octahedron. There is an easier way of doing this
instead of subtracting 8 times. You can multiply the initial volume of the corner piece by 8 and
subtract it then because there are 8 corners on a cube. To recall, the volume of the pyramid was
288 so you have to multiple that by 8 (288*8) to make 2,304 cm3. Now you just subtract 13.824
and 2,304 (13,284-2,304) to get the volume of the whole cubo-octahedron to be 11,520 cm3.
The second way to find the volume of the cubooctahedron is to have a right square prism and attach four
rectangular pyramids to the lateral faces. As seen in the picture to
the right, b is the square prism and a is the rectangular
pyramid. The first step to finding the volume is finding the
dimensions of the two polyhedrons.
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you can find the volume. When you fill in the formula, it should be Vpr=288*24 which is 6,912.
So the volume of the square prism is 6,912 cm3. Now you need to find the volume of the
rectangular pyramid and the formula for that is Vp =
()*Ab*hp (let Vp= Volume of a pyramid, Ab= Area of the
base, and hp= Height of the pyramid). The base of the
pyramid is a rectangle so the formula for that is Ar=b*h (let
Ar= Area of a rectangle). When you fill in the formula it
should be A=24*122 because of the recently found
dimensions. The answer to that is 2882, so the area of
the base is 2882 cm2. Now you have to find the height
of the pyramid. To do so, you can use one of the
equilateral triangles like seen in the picture to the right.
If you bisect the triangle, it becomes two 30-60-90 type triangles which is another special
right triangle. Since you bisected the triangle, the two lengths both divide into 62 cm. In a 3060-90, the side opposite of the 30 angle is considered a or the normal number, the
hypotenuse is 2a, and the side opposite of the 60 is a3. In this case a is considered 62 cm.
Now you have to find the height of that equilateral triangle and that is the side across from the
60 angle so you have to multiply 62 by 3 which makes the height 66 cm. Now if you make
a 3-D model of the pyramid, you can find the actual height using the Pythagorean Theorem
(a2+b2=c2). The picture to the left shows the pyramid folded. You can draw in the triangle from
the picture above and you know that the slant height (height of a lateral face) is 66 cm. Now
you fill in the Pythagorean Theorem, 122+b2=(66)2. The a is 12 because 12 is one of the
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legs of the triangle; b is the height so that stays a variable, and the hypotenuse is 66 because of
what was found earlier. This is how to work the equation out:
122+b2=(66)2
144+b2=36*6
144+b2=216
-144
-144
-----------------b2=72
b2=72
b=72
b=36*2
b=62 cm
So the height of the whole pyramid is 62 cm. Now we can fill in the volume formula as
Vp=()*2882*62 and the volume of the rectangular pyramid is 1,152 cm3. Now we have to
multiply that by four because there are four rectangular pyramids: 1,152*4= 4,608 cm3. The final
step to finding the volume is to add the rectangular pyramids volume with the square prisms
volume, so that would be 4,608+6,912 which equals 11,520
cm3. Thats how you find the volume of the cubo-octahedron
by using a right square prism and four rectangular pyramids.
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square base and four equilateral triangles as the lateral faces. The first step to find the volume is
to find the dimensions of each net.
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The a is 26 because the short leg of a tetrahedron is (1/3) of the half the other triangle so (1/3)
of 62 is 26.
(4*6)+b2=(36*6)
24+b2=216
-24
-24
-----------------b2=192
b2=192
b=192
The height of the tetrahedron is 192 cm long. Now you have to find the area of the base which
is a triangle so the formula is Ab=()*b*h. The base is 122 cm and we already found the height
of it which is 66 cm. So now fill in the formula as Ab=()*(122)*(66) which makes the area
of the base 3612 cm2. Now that you have the height and area, you can fill in the volume
formula as Vp=(1/3)*(3612)*(192) which makes the volume of the tetrahedron 576 cm3. Now
you have to multiply that by 8 because there are 8 tetrahedrons so it should be 576*8 which
makes the volume of all the tetrahedrons together 4,608 cm3. Now you have to find the volume
of the square pyramid using the formula Vp=(1/3)*Ab*hp. The base is a square, so you use the
formula A=b*h and fill it in as A=(122)*( 122) to get the area of the base to be 288 cm3.
Now to find the height, you do it similar to the tetrahedron as you use the Pythagorean Theorem,
but the difference is that the short segment is 62 cm. To work out the equation:
a2+b2=c2
(62)2+b2=(66)2
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You can solve it like the tetrahedron; because they are both pyramids and both have the same
dimensions.
36*2+b2=36*6
72+b2=216
-72
-72
---------------b2=144
b2=144
b=12
The height of the square pyramid is 12 cm. Now that we have that, we can fill in the formula as
Vp=(1/3)*288*12 which makes the volume 1,152. Then multiply that by 6 because there are six
square pyramids to make 1,152*6 to get 6,912 cm3 as the volume of all the square pyramids.
Lastly you have to add up both volumes (6,912+4,608) to get the volume of the whole cubooctahedron 11,520 cm3. Thats how you find the volume using 8 tetrahedrons and 6 square
pyramids.
In conclusion, the cubo-octahedron is a complex Archimedean solid which has three
different unique ways to find its volume: using a corner piece of the cube, using a square prism
and four rectangular pyramids, and using a 8 tetrahedrons and 6 square pyramids. Even though
youre using three different methods, the volume should always be the same. This is because it is
the same cubo-octahedron each time so the volume should never change, even if its found in
different ways. You can find the volume and the surface area of the whole thing just by being
given the length of an edge of the original cube. When finding all these things, only one problem
had occurred. That problem was that the volume from case 1 did not match the volume in case 2
until we realized that in case 1, you have to multiply the volume of a corner piece by 8. When we
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did that, the volumes matched up. Some pictures were made by the TI-Nspire Student
Software, one was received from a website, and the others were made by Mr. Acre.