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What are the Platonic solids?

The platonic solids are the five regular polyhedra (many-sided objects): the four-sided tetrahedron, the six-sided cube or hexahedron, the eight-sided octahedron, the twelve-sided dodecahedron, and the twenty-sided icosahedron. "Regular" means that all faces and angles of the object are identical.

The regular polyhedra were first studied by Greek philosopher, mystic, and mathematician Pythagoras (ca. 580-ca. 500 B.C.). However, they are called the "Platonic solids" because they were first described in detail by Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) around 400 B.C.

The ancient Greeks assigned mystical significance to the Platonic solids: the tetrahedron represented fire, the icosahedron represented water, the cube represented Earth, and the octahedron represented air. The twelve faces of the dodecahedron corresponded to the twelve signs of the zodiac and collectively represented the...

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