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Monday, 2012 July 30, 19:31 — mathematics

soap films in curved space

A few of the many triply periodic minimal surfaces can be generated from a quadrilateral slice through a tetrahedron of mirrors, as refined by Surface Evolver. I had the idea that the same concept, applied to one of the analogous tetrahedra that tile spherical 3-space, could result in a pretty model.

To my disappointment, none of the non-prismatic kaleidoscopes — those that generate the six regular polychora — hosts a nondegenerate minimal surface (of this simple form); but each of the duoprism kaleidoscopes gives at least one.

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