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BGonline.org Forums
Why do dice have six sides? -- OT, but related, and interesting
Posted By: Bill Riles
Date: Thursday, 12 May 2011, at 2:10 a.m.
They've been with us forever, providing civilization after civilization with convenient, pocket-sized random-number generators to supply their gaming, gambling, and entertainment needs.
But of all the shapes in the world, why did they all settle on the cube as the perfect shape for dice?
Actually, there aren't all that many suitable shapes, considering the needs of game players. Most importantly, a die has to be fair -- that is, it must have an equal chance of landing on any of its faces. It also needs to roll well, but not too well, and have a clearly identifiable top face. Trickier than it sounds.
Fortunately, math provides us the perfect place to get started, with the set of shapes known as the Platonic solids. (That's Platonic as in "Plato," the famous Greek philosopher, not Platonic as in "having close but non-physical relationships with each other.")
Platonic solids are those with flat faces that are the same size and shape, and with corners that have the same number of edges meeting at the same angle. There are five such shapes, and they're unusually even-looking and pleasing to the eye: the four-sided, pyramid-like tetrahedron, the six-sided cube, the eight-sided octahedron, the twelve-sided dodecahedron, and the twenty-sided icosahedron. In addition to their awesome, nerdy names, their unique, multiple symmetries make them great starting points for making dice.
All except one, that is. The triangular tetrahedron doesn't really roll -- it has to be thrown instead -- and it doesn't have a top face, making it awkward to read. They show up in some special-purpose games, but they're too inconvenient for general-purpose use. So next up is the second simplest, the cube.
Turns out the cube has lots of advantages over the other Platonic shapes. It's much easier to carve than the others, for one thing, and its square corners can readily be checked for evenness. Cubes pack with no wasted space, unlike most polyhedrons. More complex shapes are harder to make, roll further (and off the table, perhaps) and just aren't needed. Six possible outcomes (or eleven, if you roll two) turns out to be just enough for most games.
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