Dodecahedron - History and Uses

History and Uses

Dodecahedral objects have found some practical applications, and have also played a role in the visual arts and in philosophy.

Plato's dialogue Timaeus (c. 360 B.C.) associates the other four platonic solids with the four classical elements, adding that "there is a fifth figure (which is made out of twelve pentagons), the dodecahedron—this God used as a model for the twelvefold division of the Zodiac." Aristotle postulated that the heavens were made of a fifth element, aithêr (aether in Latin, ether in American English), but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.

A few centuries later, small, hollow bronze Roman dodecahedra were made and have been found in various Roman ruins in Europe. Their purpose is not certain.

In 20th-century art, dodecahedra appear in the work of M.C. Escher, such as his lithograph Reptiles (1943), and in his Gravitation. In Salvador Dalí's painting The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), the room is a hollow dodecahedron.

In modern role-playing games, the dodecahedron is often used as a twelve-sided die, one of the more common polyhedral dice. Some quasicrystals have dodecahedral shape (see figure). Some regular crystals such as garnet and diamond are also said to exhibit "dodecahedral" habit, but this statement actually refers to the rhombic dodecahedron shape.

The popular puzzle game Megaminx is in the shape of a dodecahedron.

In the children's novel The Phantom Tollbooth, the Dodecahedron appears as a character in the land of Mathematics. Each of his faces wears a different expression—e.g. happy, angry, sad—which he swivels to the front as required to match his mood.

Dodecahedron is the name of avant-garde black metal band from Netherlands.