Math Craft Features

News: Rotating Mirror Stellated Octahedron

The initial idea for this project was to use magnets in the tips of the stellated octahedron and the intersections of the metal rings for either suspension or even a sort of weightless rotation. This turned out to be a bit too ambitious considering I'm working with found mirror and hot glue. So instead, I scrapped the magnets and went with simply mounting it on a skateboard bearing so it can freely rotate and not be bound to the base.

News: Modular Origami

Cory has posted some great picture of Father Magnus' intersecting cubes (the great man is holding one in his right hand) - well the above is what happens when five tetrahedra intersect. It is modular origami and made from just ten sheets of origami paper. technically in a folding sense it is easy - but putting it together is mind-warping

News: M.C. Escher Square Tessellation Ornaments

Imatfaal's awesome post on Escher's tessellations on Polyhedra reminded me of some ornaments I made this summer. I made some of Escher's square tessellations onto cubes and then reprojected them onto spheres. I actually used a 60 sided Deltoidal hexecontahedron since that net is fairly easy to fold and looks pretty round.

News: Orderly Tangle Earrings

I decided I would make those earrings I alluded to in Monday's Post on orderly tangles. I had to shrink the templates down so that the triangles are about 2 cm on a side. I used 110 lb cardstock and and painted them using metallic leafing paint in gold, silver, copper, and brass. I would put up a tutorial, except I think that this project would be too frustrating for most people. All I can suggest is that you make the orderly tangle of 4 triangles multiple times and just keep shrinking the si...

News: Escher Tessellated Polyhedra

After Cory Poole posted some great Escher snowflakes, and Cerek Tunca had the great idea of using it as a base for a tetrahedron, well, I just had to give it a go. I will post a few more pictures and variants later (I think this was what Cerek was envisaging—if not let me know!)

News: Nice Range of Modular Models

A source of inspiration... Models folded and photographed by Michal Kosmulski. There are only two sets of instructions on the site, but they are very well done. I wish he had covered more of the models. Here are a few I would like to tackle (I'll admit my eyes are bigger than my plate):

News: Cyriak Harris' Fractal Freakiness

I'm sure many of you have already seen this, but being Halloween and mathematically inspired, I thought I'd dig up an old favorite for those who may have missed it. Original post with quote from Cyriak here. More fractal hands: Tim Hawkinson's "Fruit" Series

News: Origami Panda

So, this is a type of origami that is called golden venture origami. This type of origami is made of hundreds to thousands of little intersecting triangles. This took about 2-3 three hours, the picture is pretty bad because it was taken at school with a cell camera. But I hope this inspires you to make some of your own! This type of origami is in essence very easy to make but takes a lot of time and effort to make. However if you get really good at it, you can do it without even looking at ab...

News: Bird's Eye Maple Veneered Papercraft Dodecahedron

I bought a sheet of ultra thin 1 ply Birdseye Maple veneer the other day and decided that It would look beautiful as a dodecahedron. I used some glue to attach it to cardstock and then cut it out as the net of a dodecahedron. I used a X-acto knife to lightly etch the fold lines on both the cardstock and the veneer so that it would fold crisply. I glued it all together using superglue. This post shows the net and how to fold it.

News: Fractal Pecan Pie

Following the pattern of fractal goodies, I found this great article on making a giant fractal pecan pie. Seems like you'll need some dedicated pecan pie enthusiasts (shouldn't be hard to find) to help you out!

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