By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics The mathematics of modular textiles allows you to take many small pieces of slotted fabric and interconnect them into a do-it-yourself garment. There is no sewing as the textile and the garment are created simultaneously. The parts can later be rearranged if perhaps you want to make […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics An interesting design exercise is to cut and fold furniture from one sheet of plywood. Peter Meijer has explored families of elliptical tables that are folded from exactly one rectangular sheet, with no unused remainder. In one family of experiments, he systematically varies the possible leg parameters, […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Anabeth Dollind made this assortment of quilted balls, based on tilings of the sphere. These first two are spherical versions of Platonic solids: the dodecahedron and icosahedron, with twelve pentagons and twenty triangles, respectively. Next are a spherical version of the icosidodecahedron, which has twelve pentagons and […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Maybe you’ve always wanted to build your own geodesic dome home, but consider that too large of a project. You can build up your skills on a smaller scale by constructing a chicken coop. Anthony Liekens built this lovely one-meter geodesic dome so his chickens can lay […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics I believe that in the future, 3D printing machines will commonly be used to make household parts, e.g., when you need to fix a broken appliance knob or handle. I put this into practice recently when I needed a replacement light dimmer knob and decided to make […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics For a true maker, any stock of unused office supplies is perceived as a challenge to make some kind of construction. Here is an icosahedrally symmetric geodesic sphere made from ninety paper fasteners. It was built by Rolando Pontalti of Trento, Italy, who also made last week’s […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Here is a geometric assembly challenge which you can try to make with wooden dowels or any other conveniently long cylinders. Each of these thirty aluminum rods touches ten others. The construction is rather tricky to accomplish even if you properly understand it as a compound of […]
