Heptagons Galore!

by Ξ

I’ve been looking for regular heptagons lately, ever since I discovered them in cookie-cake lids and pill-boxes, Harry Potter tokens, coins, and architecture. It turns out that there are a whole host of regular heptagons over on flickr, which makes me happy.

One vivid example that occurs in photography is flares in the shape of heptagons, as in the photo below by theilr. This occurs because of the shape of the aperture, and different lens designs will produce different polygons. This photo was taken with a Nikon D50; our old Pentax, on the other hand, produces pentagon flares.

Update 4/17: theilr sent me a link to the photo below (from this wiki article) showing the heptagonal iris of a camera! Thanks!

St. Leonard’s Church in Sunningwell, Oxfordshire has a 16^th century porch in the shape of a heptagon. You can see some of the sides of the Jewell porch in this photo by Oxfordshire Church Illustrations.

$heptagon-shaped Jewell porch at St. Leonard\'s church.$

You can see the other side of the Jewell porch in this photo. (Sadly, I couldn’t find an aerial view on Google Maps, although I thought that would have been cool!) Update 4/17: TwoPi found a Google view, but I’m running into technical problems with embedding it. You can see it here. (Zoom in all the way: it’s just below the green arrow.)

Update 4/18: In the mail today I got the official permission from the English Heritage National Monuments Record (!) to post the photo of the other side of the Jewell porch, so here it is, completing the view of the heptagon (except for the seventh side connected to the church wall).

Tesselate has created a group of limited edition characters with polygonal heads known as Metlex friends & family. As a bonus, the heptagonal characters come in heptagonal boxes. Update 4/18: the red smiley one is Ploblex. All the folk below, plus others like one with a heart-shaped head, can be found on Tessetoys.

There’s an Aspen Tree Heptagon porcelain planter from jobernofsky:

And if, having read this far, you realize that it’s now dinnertime, then like earnshavian you can make a Steak and Kidney pie in the shape of a heptagon!

For even more examples, visit the pool seven-fold symmetry on flickr!

Tags: heptagons

This entry was posted on April 16, 2008 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Polygons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Heptagons Galore!”

Krithiga Says:
April 17, 2008 at 10:18 am | Reply
I’ve been keeping an eye out for regular polygons with odd number of sides. One example is the Indian 2 rupee coin with 11 sides:

Wonder if there are 11 sided polygons seen in common.
Ξ Says:
April 17, 2008 at 10:34 am | Reply
Neat!

The Susan B. Anthony dollar is round on the outside (in order to fit in vending machines) but it has an 11-sided polygon inscribed on the inside of the circle, although it’s not as obvious as in the 2 rupee coin.