By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics
Temari balls are a traditional Japanese craft in which colored thread is applied to a sphere in a geometric pattern. This is a modern example, given to me by the Japanese master Kiyoko Urata.
There has been a repopularization of temari recently by people such as Carolyn Yackel at Mercer University, who teaches and writes about their underlying mathematics. Below is an example of her work with thirty rectangles centered on the two-fold rotation points of the icosahedral symmetry group.
More:
See all of George Hart’s Math Monday columns
2 thoughts on “Math Monday: Temari balls”
Comments are closed.
Finally in my late 30’s I am learning the geometry that I never understood at school. I was a fully fledged mathematical dunce… the magic of temari making.