Making a snub cube

Introduction -- Making the Modules -- Making the Polyhedra -- Jim's Origami Page
The snub cube has six square faces and 32 triangular faces. There are 24 vertices at which five faces meet in the order square-triangle-triangle-triangle-triangle. It has 60 edges: 24 triangle/square hybrid (tr--sq) modules and 36 triangle (tr--tr) modules. There are two enantiomorphic forms of the snub cube. The snub cube is fairly solid, and the two colorings below are very pretty.

You can color the snub cube with three colors as follows: Divide both sets of modules into three equal number of colors. With the tr--sq modules, make six squares, two of each color. Take the square of color 1. You'll note from the picture that each vertex of the square has three tr--tr modules incident to it. On one vertex, make these of color 2-1-2. On the next, make them 3-1-3. On the next, make them 2-1-2 again, and on the final vertex, make them 3-1-3 again. This is how it will work with all squares -- if a square is of color y, then one pair of opposite vertices will have modules ordered x-y-x, and the other pair will have modules ordered z-y-z. It works out so that each pair of squares is on opposite faces, and the pattern is pleasing. To get a snub cube from four colors, simply do the same as above, only make all the tr--sq modules out of color 4. The ordering of the tr--tr modules should be the same.


A Penultimate Snub Cube


The snub cube


Jim Plank --- Jim's Origami Page