math them

I've been making tensegrity polyhedra for about a decade now and have never taken the time to write about them for a general audience, so thought this might be a good time to do so. As with my post on modular origami with Sonobe units , we'll be looking at a single unit along with some mathematical insights that lead to a variety of structures.

I got a couple construction toys and thought I'd look at some things that can be built with them, focusing on loops and polyhedral structures.

Today we're going to look at some arts and crafts projects related to great (and not-so-great) circles found on polyhedra and links. A few of these models were shown to me by Mircea Draghicescu of ITSHPUN fame and the rest are riffing on the theme.

I'm in New Jersey this week, so thought I'd break format and give an update on a couple of topics that connect to the trip!

As summer approaches, JRMF's plan is to develop a slew of activities to test in the fall. To that end, I'll be trying to post activities more frequently but with less of a mathematical dive. Today we'll look at some puzzles involving making polyhedra from a set of faces.

Glen Whitney and Alex Kontorovich are putting together a mathematical art expo visualizing Euler's formula for polyhedra, with polyhedra placed at their respective \( (v,e,f) \)-coordinates to form the plane \( v-e+f = 2 \) in 3-space. I thought we would look at another polyhedron construction method and hopefully end with something we can ship their way!

The other month, I volunteered at Seattle Universal Math Museum's corner of Free First Thursdays at the Museum of Flight. Part of this was helping kids make origami paper airplanes, which reminded me of some origami challenges I used to give students. I'll present one of my favorite arcs here.