WOLFRAM|DEMONSTRATIONS PROJECT

Biggest Little Polyhedron

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vertices
16
alternate pictures
unit-rod polyhedron
opacity
0.7
label vertices
Evaluating Initialization…
A polyhedron has
n
vertices. The greatest distance between vertices is 1. What is the maximum volume of the polyhedron? This is known as the biggest little polyhedron problem.
For four vertices, the solution is trivially the regular tetrahedron.
Five vertices require an equilateral triangle and a perpendicular unit line; this was solved in 1976 [1].
Six vertices require a more complex solution, which was solved to four digits of accuracy in 2003 [2, 3].
The author found exact solutions for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 16 points [4, 5]. This Demonstration contains those solutions, as well as the best known solutions up to 128 points. Oleg Vlasii improved many of these values.