By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics By pleating a square sheet of paper with a pattern of concentric squares, one can fold a saddle shape that mathematicians call a hyperbolic paraboloid, sometimes nicknamed a hypar. Erik Demaine led a workshop at a recent Museum of Mathematics event where he showed how multiple hypars […]
Stained glass can be used to make many mathematical forms. One very beautiful shape is the polar zonohedron. Hans Schepker made this three-foot diameter example from hundreds of pieces of stained glass.
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics The Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher has inspired many people to create mathematical artwork. This elegant cut-and-fold paper model of Escher’s famous lithograph, Relativity, is a virtuoso homage to Escher’s genius. Bryan Peele designed this construction, which is cut from a single sheet of 8.5 by 11 […]
Make a lovely five-pointed star assembled from eighty pencils.
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics We have seen various ways to make the Sierpinski tetrahedron in a past Math Monday column, but here is a new one. A direct laser writing process was used to produce this polymer tetrahedron, which is just 100 microns tall—the thickness of a hair. This remarkable object […]
Here’s another response to George Hart’s challenge to build a snub dodecahedron out of paperclips. A few weeks ago, we showed you Charlotte DeKoning’s build, using twist-tie wires at the junctions. This morning, we got this beauty sent to us, built by Christopher Edwards. He soldered his junctions together. Nice job, Christopher! More: Paperclip Snub […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Tim Chartier at Davidson College has discovered that if you make things out of candy there’s no lack of volunteers to help you clean up. He takes images and transforms them mathematically into arrays of candy pieces. Here you can see President Obama, as rounded to the […]
