Zonotope (EntityClass, 8)
From Hi.gher. Space
A zonotope is a polytope which can be constructed as the Minkowski sum of a set of vectors, or line segments with one endpoint at the origin. These vectors are known as the generators of the zonotope.
There are many other equivalent definitions:
- a projection of an n-hypercube, where n is the number of generators;
- a polytope which can be alternated;
- a polytope whose facets are all convex with point symmetry (note that they need not have brick symmetry).
Not all zonotopes are bricks. However, every zonotope can be deformed into a brick with the same topological structure as the original zonotope. On the other hand, it is important to note that this does not work the other way around: there are many bricks (such as the octahedron) which cannot be deformed into a zonotope with the same topological structure as the original brick.
Dissection of zonotopes
One important property of zonotopes is that they can always be dissected into a number of primitive zonotopes. A primitive zonotope is an n-dimensional zonotope with n generators; it follows that all primitive zonotopes are affine transformations of hypercubes.
