Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2023 / Paper 2 / 9 / a

Act on the four labelled vertices. A proper rotation gives an even permutation, identifying the rotational tetrahedral symmetry group with $A_4$, an alternating group. Geometrically there are one identity, three half-turns about opposite-edge midpoint axes, and two nontrivial rotations about each of four vertex-face axes. ThereforeThe tetrahedral rotation conjugacy classes areTo justify the splitting, the centralizer of a 3-cycle within $A_4$ is its three-element cyclic subgroup, so its conjugacy class has size $12/3=4$. Its inverse is not conjugate to it in $A_4$: the permutations that reverse that cycle while preserving its fixed vertex are odd. Conjugating $(123)$ by the even permutations produces the displayed $C_{+}$, and taking inverses gives $C_{-}$. The three half-turns are conjugate, since rotations move their axes into one another. Their centralizer has order four and their class therefore has size three.