Taking Making to the Limit

For the Museum of Mathematics
MathMonday
Continuing Math Mondays’ series on the recent Bridges conference, today we highlight three different genres of mathematical making which we have seen before in Math Mondays, but which were represented at the highest levels of intricacy and development at Bridges. To start with, mathematical beading: various polyhedra cleverly strung with beads have graced this column in the past.  But at bridges we had the following offerings taking this technique to a very high level:

Chern Chuang "Superdodecahedton with V-shaped Connections?C80"
Chern Chuang “Superdodecahedron with V-shaped Connections?C80”
Chern Chuang "C60?C60"
Chern Chuang “C60?C60”
Laura Shea "Disco Ball Explosion"
Laura Shea “Disco Ball Explosion”

Next up is mathematical quilting, which we have seen twice already in this space. There were a couple of different entries in this category at Bridges:

Ricardo Nemirovsky and J. Brooke Ernest "Complex Functions"
Ricardo Nemirovsky and J. Brooke Ernest “Complex Functions”
Jane Adler "Marjorie Rice's 90th Birthday Quilt"
Jane Adler “Marjorie Rice’s 90th Birthday Quilt”

The second of these is based on Marjorie Rice‘s “Versatile,” a pentagon that tiles the plane in numerous different ways.

And to wrap up for today, we’ve seen various mathematical knitting/crocheting/textile projects in Math Mondays, but here’s a new twist:  An actual, wearable cross-cap.

Carlo and Margareta Séquin "Knitted Cross Cap"
Carlo and Margareta Séquin “Knitted Cross Cap”

Plenty more highlights to come…

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Executive Director, Museum of Mathematics

View more articles by Glen Whitney

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