Octahedral number

146 magnetic balls, packed in the form of an octahedron

In number theory, an octahedral number is a figurate number that represents the number of spheres in an octahedron formed from close-packed spheres. The nth octahedral number can be obtained by the formula:[1]

The first few octahedral numbers are:

1, 6, 19, 44, 85, 146, 231, 344, 489, 670, 891 (sequence A005900 in the OEIS).
  1. ^ Conway, John Horton; Guy, Richard K. (1996), The Book of Numbers, Springer-Verlag, p. 50, ISBN 978-0-387-97993-9.