Bricard octahedron

In geometry, a Bricard octahedron is a member of a family of flexible polyhedra constructed by Raoul Bricard in 1897. The overall shape of one of these polyhedron may change in a continuous motion, without any changes to the lengths of its edges nor to the shapes of its faces. These octahedra were the first flexible polyhedra to be discovered.

The Bricard octahedra have six vertices, twelve edges, and eight triangular faces, connected in the same way as a regular octahedron. Unlike the regular octahedron, the Bricard octahedra are all non-convex self-crossing polyhedra. By Cauchy's rigidity theorem, a flexible polyhedron must be non-convex, but there exist other flexible polyhedra without self-crossings. Avoiding self-crossings requires more vertices (at least nine) than the six vertices of the Bricard octahedra.

In his publication describing these octahedra, Bricard completely classified the flexible octahedra. His work in this area was later the subject of lectures by Henri Lebesgue at the Collège de France.