Blaschke sum
In convex geometry and the geometry of convex polytopes, the Blaschke sum of two polytopes is a polytope that has a facet parallel to each facet of the two given polytopes, with the same measure. When both polytopes have parallel facets, the measure of the corresponding facet in the Blaschke sum is the sum of the measures from the two given polytopes. Blaschke sums exist and are unique up to translation, as can be proven using the theory of the Minkowski problem for polytopes. They can be used to decompose arbitrary polytopes into simplices, and centrally symmetric polytopes into parallelotopes. Although Blaschke sums of polytopes are used implicitly in the work of Hermann Minkowski, Blaschke sums are named for Wilhelm Blaschke, who defined a corresponding operation for smooth convex sets. The Blaschke sum operation can be extended to arbitrary convex bodies, generalizing both the polytope and smooth cases, using measures on the Gauss map. Definition For any -dimensional polytope, one can specify its collection of facet directions and measures by a finite set of -dimensional nonzero vectors, one per facet, pointing perpendicularly outward from the facet, with length equal to the -dimensional measure of its facet. As Hermann Minkowski proved,