Monday, April 17, 2017

Simple geometry. Or is it?


I've got a regular tetrahedron and a square pyramid. Every edge of the two solids has the same length. If I perfectly attach one face of the tetrahedron to one of the triangular faces of the square pyramid (I.E. every point of one face overlaps a point of the other face, edges and vertexes included) how many faces will the new solid have?




Edit, let me clarify: this only has to do with geometry. No lateral-thinking, no word puns, no silly explanations (otherwise I would have added some of these tags), just pure and simple geometry. Yes, it may look stupid, but it isn't.




Inspired by "How many faces does the resulting polyhedron have?" on Math SE.



Answer



The answer is



5




I can't draw this, but



if the square pyramid sits on its base
and has its four triangular faces oriented N S E W,
and you set the tetrahedron to the east of the pyramid on its base,
with one side facing full west - call this face 1,
leaving face 2 pointing roughly NE and face 3 facing roughly SE,
and face 4 the face it sits on the ground on...

now tip the tetrahedron over to rest its face 1 against the E face of the pyramid, and glue it like that. you'll find that the edge between its faces 2 and 3 is now parallel to the ground, extending due east from the point of the pyramid. face 2 is perfectly aligned with pyramid's N face, and face 3 with the pyramid's S face. face 4 is now off the ground and doesn't align with anything in particular.

faces of the conjoined figure are now:
1: pyramid W

2: pyramid N + tetrahedron 2
3: pyramid S + tetrahedron 3
4: pyramid base
5: tetrahedron 4

with pyramid E and tetrahedron 1 glued and no longer externally visible as faces at all.



(Removed the OP-suggested image I had here. It wasn't accurate, and one commenter plus two other answers in the thread have posted much better images.)


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