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The number of colourings of a polyhedron and the effect of indirect symmetries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Rex Watson*
Affiliation:
Homerton College, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2PH

Extract

A fairly well-known problem is that of counting the number of different colourings of the set of faces of a polyhedron, using n colours. Of course it depends on what is meant by ‘different’. As perhaps the simplest non-trivial example, let n = 2 (red and blue say) and consider the regular tetrahedron. If we regard the tetrahedron as static, then perhaps the answer is 24 = 16, since each of the 4 faces can be red or blue. However we are in the habit of picking up objects and rotating them around, so maybe a better (and more interesting) interpretation of ‘different’ is to regard two paintings as distinct if one cannot be rotated into the other. We are left with the following 5 distinct possibilities :

all red or all blue ; 3 red, 1 blue, or vice-versa ; 2 red, 2 blue.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1995

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References

1. Open University, Introduction to pure mathematics (M203), Unit 5: Group actions, Open University (1991) pp. 3233.Google Scholar
2. Gilbert, W. J. Modern algebra with applications, Wiley (1976) p. 134.Google Scholar