Alert! Virus! Virus!
The 3-D model of the adenovirus is an icosahedral structure as shown. The viral capsid (shell) has 20 triangular faces, as the word root suggests, and there are totally 12 "spikes" on the shell vertices.
How many edges does this viral structure have?
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1 solution
According to Euler's characteristics, any convex polyhedron can be applied to this formula:
V - E + F = 2 ; where V is the number of vertices; E is the number of edges; and F is the number of faces.
The icosahedron has 20 faces and 12 vertices, so E = V + F - 2 = 12 + 20 - 2 = 30 edges.