Bryan Derksen wrote:
> They'd make for neat bricks. Octahedra and tetrahedra can be alternated
> to form a vertex, edge, and face-uniform tessellation of space, see
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedral-octahedral_honeycomb>.
If you
> wanted to make the structure entirely out of diamond you'd need to carve
> the tetrahedra, which would be expensive, but it looks like you could
> substitute some other opaque material to make the tetrahedra out of and
> still get plenty of light through the wall. The insulating power of
> solid diamond is nil, of course.
Oho! If you can find a cheap way to chop the corners off of the diamond
crystals, making truncated octohedra out of them, you can fill as much
space as you like:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitruncated_cubic_honeycomb>.
Wouldn't have a smooth surface like layers in a tetrahedral-octohedral
honeycomb would, but perhaps someone can think of a reason why a solid
block of diamond that's many meters on a side might be useful for
something.
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