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This article is about the geometry term. For other uses, 1 Alternative denitions
see Dihedral.
In geometry, a dihedral or torsion angle is the angle Since a plane can be dened in several ways (e.g., by vectors or points in them, or by their normal vectors), there
are several equivalent denitions of a dihedral angle.
Any plane can be dened by two non-collinear vectors
lying in that plane; taking their cross product and normalizing yields the normal unit vector to the plane. Thus,
a dihedral angle can be dened by four, pairwise noncollinear vectors.
We may also dene the dihedral angle of three noncollinear vectors b1 , b2 and b3 (red, green and blue, respectively, in the diagram). The vectors b1 and b2 dene
the rst plane, whereas b2 and b3 dene the second plane.
The dihedral angle corresponds to an exterior spherical
angle, given by
(
)
b2
= atan2 ([b1 b2 ] [b2 b3 ])
, [b1 b2 ] [b2 b3 ] ,
|b2 |
as derived in.[2]
Dihedral angle of three vectors, dened as an exterior spherical
angle. The longer and shorter black segments are arcs of the
great circles passing through b1 and b2 and through b2 and b3
, respectively.
Every polyhedron, regular and irregular, convex and conThe dihedral angle of two planes can be seen by looking at cave, has a dihedral angle at every edge.
the planes edge on, i.e., along their line of intersection. A dihedral angle (also called the face angle) is the inThe dihedral angle AB between two planes denoted A ternal angle at which two adjacent faces meet. An anand B is the angle between their two normal unit vectors gle of zero degrees means the face normal vectors are
nA and nB :
antiparallel and the faces overlap each other (Implying
part of a degenerate polyhedron). An angle of 180 degrees means the faces are parallel (like a tiling). An angle
greater than 180 exists on concave portions of a polyhedron.
cos (AB ) = nA nB
(
AB = arccos
UA UB
|UA ||UB |
(
= arcsin
|UA UB |
|UA ||UB |
6 See also
MurakamiYano formula
Stereochemistry
Ramachandran plot
Flory convention
Methods of computation
7 References
External links
The Dihedral Angle in Woodworking at Tips.FM
Analysis of the 5 Regular Polyhedra gives a step-bystep derivation of these exact values.
Weisstein, Eric W., Dihedral angle, MathWorld.
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