Physics Basics Series
- Basics of Classical Mechanics.
- Basics of Quantum Mechanics.
- Basics of Electrodynamics.
- Basics of Optics.
- Basics of Mathematical Tools for Physics.
- Basics of Plasma Physics.
- Basics of Solid State Physics.
Troy Stark's Science & Society Opinion Blog
Welcome to the StarkEffects.com Puzzle -How Many Faces!
Combining Solid Objects Can be a Mental Workout.
A Tetrahedron and a Square Pyrimid
Combining these two objects yields a little geometric surprise.
Imagine taking two solids, a tetrahedron and a square pyramid. The square pyramid has five (5) faces, one of them is a square while the other four are triangles. The tetrahedron has only four (4) faces, all of which are triangles.
If you attached two tetrahedron's face to face you would have an object with 6 faces. Each tetrahedron had 4 faces, added together is 8 faces minus the 2 faces that are now inaccessible since they are attached to each other.
If you attached the square pyramid’s square face to one of the square faces of a cube you would have an object with 9 faces. The cube had 6 faces, the pyramid had 5 faces, added together is 11 faces minus the 2 faces that are now inaccessible since they are attached to each other.
Now, if the triangles of the tetrahedron exactly match the triangles of the square pyramid, in other words they are congruent, then you could create a new solid by attaching one triangular face of the pyramid to one of the triangular faces of the tetrahedron.
The puzzle is: How many faces does your new solid have?
Try this is in 3D. Click here to get a pattern you can cut out and fold to make a tetrahedron, and click here to get a pattern you can cut out and fold to make a square pyramid with triangular faces congruent to those on the tetrahedron. You may be surprised!
You can have fun making new solids with two square pyramids attached by different faces or two tetrahedrons attached together. These are not as interesting as the puzzle, but still fun.
Quick Science & Math References
- Our Solar System.
- Earth Facts.
- The Metric System.
- Trigonometric Identities.
- Vector & Tensor Identities.
- Explicit Forms of Vector Operators
- Light & Electromagnetic Spectrum.
- Common Laser Wavelengths.
- Human Physiology Facts.
- Human History Timeline
- Geologic Timeline
- Cambrian Explosion
- Life on Earth Timeline
- ASCII Codes and HTML Display Codes
- Thousands of HTML Symbol Codes
- HTML Symbol Codes for Greek Letters
- The Best Way to put Equations on your Web Page
Physics Basics Series
- Basics of Classical Mechanics.
- Basics of Quantum Mechanics.
- Basics of Electrodynamics.
- Basics of Optics.
- Basics of Mathematical Tools for Physics.
- Basics of Plasma Physics.
- Basics of Solid State Physics.
Math Basics Series
- Numbers
- Arithmetic
- Algebra
- Geometry
- Analysis
Technology Basics Series
- Basics of Remote Sensing.
- Basics of Digital Signal Processing.
- Critical Electronic Circuits
- Infrared Imaging Basics
Knowledge Branches
- Information Theory
- How Reading Works in the Brain
- Psychology of Learning
- Logic
WORK IN PROGRESS
- What is the Stark Effect?
- The Chemistry of Love &/or Addiction
- Critical Thinking: How to question what you see, read or hear.
- Aristotle's Prior Analytics - the birth of Logic.
- Optical Solutions, lenses that solve problems
- Fractals
- PTC - Photon Transfer Curve or Mean Variance Analysis
- 3-D Noise
- Laser Primer
- Rail Guns
- Special Relativity
- Radar Technology
- Acousto-optic Cells
- Harmonic Generation for Laser Frequency Doubling (SHG) and Tripling -using non-linear crystals.
- Measurement: Accuracy & Precision.
- Things you should know about computer modeling of physical phenomena!
- Giant Magneto-resistance
- Peltier Cooling
- Pyro-Electric Detectors
- Piezo-Electric Crystals
- Laser Speckle
- FFT and DFT the fast fourier transform and the discrete fourier transform
- Fabry Perot Etalon
- The Hydrogen Atom.
- PCA (Principal Component Analysis)
- Energy per mass in fuels such as Hydrogen, Gasoline, Kerosene, HMX etc...
- Nobel prize winning work on the CCD
- How does a CCD work and what are the normal characteristics of a CCD
- Nobel Prize Winning work on Giant Magneto-resistance
- FROG -frequency resolved optical gating
- Optical Wavefront Sensing
- THz imaging and time-domain spectroscopy
- Camera Calibration
- Laser Designators
- Resampling