This shape has a little secret. It’s known as a chamfered cube, and it’s not as perfect as it first seems…
The common name for the object you’ve made is a chamfered cube. If you take a cube and then slice off all the edges, this is the shape you’ll get. So, what makes it special?
This three dimensional object looks like it’s made from squares and regular hexagons. But if you look carefully, you’ll notice that the hexagons are a bit squished. The hexagon sides are all the same length, but the angles are not all the same. If you try to make this shape with perfectly regular squares and hexagons, the angles just don’t work, and it won’t make a nice ball-like shape.
Three dimensional objects made from regular shapes are called Johnson solids. This shape is a near-miss Johnson solid. It’s close to being one, but not quite there.
This not-quite-right shape is a not a sign that something is wrong. Maths is full of strange things that don’t quite work the way you might expect!
There is a solid shape you can make with regular squares and hexagons. It’s called a truncated octahedron and it looks a bit like this shape. The main difference is that each hexagon touches three squares rather than two.
So if this shape made you feel a bit weird, that’s okay – there is a more perfect shape for you out there.
Fold a similar shape, used as a dice by the Ancient Chinese
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