Math Monday: What to Make from Drinking Straws?
Two methods of making geometric models from drinking straws.
Math Monday
Math Monday: Paper knot pentagons
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics If you take a long strip of paper, tie a simple overhand knot in it, tighten it up, and press it flat, the result is a regular pentagon. That construction is well known, and can be found, for example, in Martin Gardner’s Second Book of Mathematical Puzzles […]
Math Monday: Geometric fruit carving
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics What could be a better centerpiece for your dessert table than a polyhedral cantaloupe? Try making this “Leonardo style” dodecahedron in which the edges are solid and the faces are open. To warm up for it, you might first want to make all five Platonic solids from […]
Math Monday: Human-scale string constructions
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics A complete graph is what mathematicians call a collection of items in which every pair is connected. If the items are spaced evenly around a circle and the connections are shown as straight lines, the lines form an attractive pattern of concentric circles. This is a complete […]
Math Monday: Geometric sculpture barn raising in DC
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics As part of the the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC, October 23-24, I will be leading a mathematical “sculpture barn raising.” The sculpture is made from hundreds of laser-cut metal triangles, assembled in a novel manner to form a gyroid surface. Anyone can come […]
Math Monday: Mathematical needlepoint
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Continuing our fiber arts theme of past weeks, today’s Math Monday offers an excellent example of mathematical needlepoint. This piece illustrates a Hilbert curve, taken to the sixth approximation. The continuously changing color of the thread makes it easy for your eye not to lose its place […]
Math Monday: Mathematical crochet
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics After last week’s column on mathematical quilts, I thought I should continue in the fiber arts category with mathematical objects that can be made by crochet. Matthew Wright at the University of Chicago has crocheted some beautiful Seifert surfaces, shown below. These are (approximately) the form that […]
