Saturday, September 22, 2007

Photo Hunters - Paper

These paper folded polyhedra are assembled using identical interlocking pieces of paper with no tape or glue. I created them in a Independent Activities Period (IAP) class at MIT 22 years ago. They've held up pretty well, although a bit faded and dusty, and are relegated to the top of a shelf 8 feet high away from the kids. The instructor was Jeannine Mosely, an electrical engineering graduate student who figured out ways to create the individual pieces from 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper without the use of rulers by approximating the angles needed (she made it sound easy but was way too humble). I recently googled her and found her latest project, the Menger Sponge. Here is the pattern for the Great and Small Stellated Dodecahedron (#1 and #3 shown here) and an example of how to make a Stellated Rhombic Dodecahedron. In this photo, from left to right, they are:
  1. Great Dodecahedron
  2. First Stellation of the Icosohedron
  3. Small Stellated Dodecahedron
  4. Great Stellated Dodecahedron
  5. Dodecahedron (since this is open, it is technically not a true polyhedron in the sense of the others, but it is really easy to whip up)
As well as these modular polyhedra, we also learned to make simple shapes such as a cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, and stellated octahedron shown below. I make them out of post-it note paper when I'm bored at work! 

13 comments :

Unknown said...

Those are great. As clumsy as I am I doubt if I could do such a fine job.

tanabata said...

Those are great! And impressive that you've had them for so long!

Anonymous said...

Those are pretty neat! I can't believe they have held up for 22 years. That is great. Have a good weekend.

Anonymous said...

WOW! Those are very pretty neat indeed! You are very creative:)
Mine is up too!

Anonymous said...

nice artworks,very precise works.. like origami i dont know if i can make one like that...happy weekend..
mine is up too.

Anonymous said...

great and stunning artworks..nice entry for this meme.happy weekend.
mine is up too.

Andree said...

omg these are gorgeous! I hope you submit this post to the carnival of math (http://carnivalofmathematics.wordpress.com/), for october! this is outstanding.

Carver said...

Those are so colorful and well done. Good idea for the paper theme.

Anonymous said...

I was going to ask you for the instructions so that I could try it out. Thanks for the links! =)

Anonymous said...

Great choice of photo! Mine is up too. Hope you can visit me! Have a great weekend! :)

Queen of My Domain said...

Wow those look and sound very difficult to make. They are very pretty though.

Anonymous said...

I think I still have one of your creations around here. But I'm not positive if it made the move half way round the world.

Paulie said...

Beautiful paper entry. I learned how to make some of those polyhedrons when I taught in California at a workshop. Lots of work -- don't blame you for puting them on high shelf.

Come and see mine.