Math Monday: Light Stick Construction

Craft & Design Science

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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November 14th, 2011 4

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

Inexpensive light sticks can be held together with rubber bands to make glowing geometric structures. Here’s a construction based on the truncated dodecahedron, with a tetrahedron over each triangle. Assembling it is a fun group activity.

The design called for 170 light sticks, including the twenty which stick out from the tetrahedra.

It came out pretty much according to the plan, with some strings to suspend it from the ceiling.

See a brief Light Stick Construction video

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See all of George Hart’s Math Monday columns

4 thoughts on “Math Monday: Light Stick Construction”

John Wood says:

November 14th, 2011 at 1:27 pm

What are these sticks of light you speak of?

Also, why isnt the video on youtube?
Hans Hurlebaus says:

November 15th, 2011 at 5:01 am

OK, you can do it, but it is not oekological…why “lieghted”?
You can do it with wood, or paper or…
but this?

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Math Monday: Light Stick Construction

By Gareth Branwyn