Math Craft News
News: TUVWXYZ Star Model
So beautiful... I'm looking forward to tackling this one: Via David Petty:
Modular Origami: Icosahedron, Octahedron & Cube
I spent the holiday weekend becoming fluent in the basics of modular origami. With practice, you can churn out the below models surprisingly quickly.
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!
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: The Intricate Sonobe Art of Meenakshi Mukerji
Last week Math Craft admin Cory Poole demonstrated how to make three of the platonic solids from Sonobe units: the cube, the octahedron, and the icosohedron; but where was the dodecahedron? I was pushed to find out how to make a sonobe dodecahedron from this beautiful picture (below) that Rachel Mansur posted on the corkboard.
MO MATH: Museum of Mathematics
The Museum of Mathematics, curated by George Hart, will be opening in 2012. Here are a few activities you can check out in the meantime.
News: 30 Square Sliding Modular Origami
Cory's post with instructions and templates Here's my first attempt at the 30 squares model. I needed to be a little bit more careful in the measuring and cutting as not everything matches up - but it is still a really pleasing shape.
News: An Octahedron Made with Sonobe Units
My first attempt with the sonobe unit! I'm now addicted. I'll be spending the holiday folding. Instructions here.
News: Folding Everlasting Gobstoppers
I came across this Dutch site called "Wat Maakt Suzette Nu?", which featured a project created with Math Craft instructions for modular origami. Suzette, the creator, did an incredible job in terms of craftsmanship and color...
News: Three-Dimensional Weaving with Sticks
These are a few examples of my latest craze. It is basically a 3d weave of cocktail sticks—just lots of them. I have made them from chopsticks and skewers as well, but have given those as presents and don't have any pictures.
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: A Compound of Two Cubes with a Minecraft theme
Compound of two cubes with a Minecraft theme.
News: DIY Crazy Paper Toy
This is just too cool. As soon as I saw this, I thought, "Math Craft!"
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: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: The Origami Tessellations of Eric Gjerde
Eric Gjerde is a master of origami who devotes much of his energy on origami tessellations. Some of his pieces fold nearly flat, forming layers that add just a hint of depth. These pieces look beautiful when lit from behind, due to the variations in brightness and color. Other pieces utilize three dimensions more fully, with repeated structures rising out of the flat page.
News: Tom Friedman's Twisted Math Art
Tom Friedman is one of my favorite artists. He's got a great sense of humor, and his work is meticulous and beautiful. He forays into Math Art, and from a partisan perspective, he seems to be inspired by mathematics, but the end results are more of a whimsical twist than a mathematically "correct" execution. But I could be totally wrong. Comment below and fill me in.
News: Mathematical Curve Stitching Takes on the Rubik's Cube
Scrabble is definitely my pastime addiction of choice, but it's not the only game I frequent. I'm a big chess fan, crossword lover, and hooked on puzzles—any kind of puzzles. Logic puzzles, sudoko, and... the Rubik's Cube.
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: Marble Binary Calculators & Other Mechanical Computers
Since today (11/11/11) is the last 6 digit binary date this century, I thought we should look at some kinetic binary calculators.
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: Curved Modular Octahedron
Each curved module replaces the equilateral triangle of a simple octahedron. Inspired and copied from Cory's post with original artwork by Richard Sweeney
News: Curves With Staight Lines
Much more complex than I had to make it- that's why I posted it. I think it looks cool...
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: The Mathematical Lego Sculptures of Andrew Lipson
Andrew Lipson builds sculptures based off of Mathematical objects using standard Lego bricks. He has built models of knots, Mobius strips, Klein bottles, Tori, Hoberman spheres (using Lego technic pieces), and recreations of M.C. Escher works.
News: The Unreasonable Beauty of Mathematics
Back in August, Scientific American posted a slideshow fitting for Math Craft. Click through to check out a slideshow depicting beauty found in mathematical structures—including a beautiful knot theory chart befitting of this week's project.
News: Beautiful Knot Sculptures
NYC based sculptor Meghan Forsyth created these beautiful knot sculptures in 2010. Can you identify which knots are depicted?
Math Craft Monday: Community Submissions (Plus Polyhedral Stellation)
It's another Monday, which means it's once again time to highlight some of the recent community submissions posted to the Math Craft corkboard. Additionally, I thought we'd take a look at the process of stellation and make some stellated polyhedra out of paper.Rachel Mansur of Giveaway Tuesdays posted a video from animator Cyriak Harris, which zooms into fractal hands, where each fingertip also has a hand and fingers. A few more details can be found here, as well as some other really cool pic...
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: Electrically Generated Fractal Branching Patterns
Natural processes often create objects that have a fractal quality. Fractal branching patterns occur in plants, blood vessel networks, rivers, fault lines, and in several electrical phenomena. Many of these processes take lifetimes, or even occur on geological timescales. But this is not the case for electrical phenomena. They often occur near instantaneously. One example would be the branching patterns that sometimes occur in lightning.
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: 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
Math Craft Monday: Community Submissions (Plus Tiling with Coins)
It's Monday, and once again it's time to highlight some of the community submissions posted to the Math Craft corkboard. In addition, I thought we'd take a look at having fun with the geometrical properties of polygons and circles by using one of the best circles I know, the penny.
News: Beyond Infinity Immersive Installation
Combine a bunch of fractal objects with mirrors and and lights and the ability to walk around inside and you get something like the image below.
News: The Venn Piagram
Someone made this awesome pie, or is it two, in the shape of the standard two circle Venn Diagram.
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: The Kinetic Wave Sculptures of Reuben Margolin
Reuben Margolin builds large scale kinetic sculptures based off of mechanical waves. Some of his sculptures contain hundreds of pulleys all working in harmony with each other to create sinusoidal waves and their resulting interference patterns. He designs them all on paper and does all of the complicated trigonometric calculations by hand. Everything is mechanical; there are no electronic controllers.
Penny Polyhedra: Cube
Not the best picture, but will do. More will be coming!
News: Torolf Sauermann
A beautiful object by artist Torolf Sauermann; see more of his math art here.
News: The Platonic Solids Get Trippy
If you haven't participated in this week's Math Craft project on the platonic solids, maybe this will inspire you to do so.
A Kit-of-No-Parts: "Crafting" Electronics at MIT
I recently came across this amazing MIT media lab site, Kit-of-No-Parts. Though not directly related to the content Cory has been posting, it is an interesting "craft" approach to technology/science. The site was created as documentation of a student's thesis work in the High-Low Tech research group at the MIT Media Lab:
News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: The Curved Geometric Paper Sculptures of Richard Sweeney
Richard Sweeney is an incredible artist whose body of work consists mainly of sculptures made from paper. His art is often related to origami, and much of his work is related to geometrical forms. I personally really love his modular forms in paper. Many of them are based off of the platonic solids, which have been discussed in previous posts this week. Below are a small number of his sculptures, which are very geometric in nature.
News: Modular Paper Sculptures Based off of Richard Sweeney's Work
Here's my version of his icosahedron: I colored it in this one so that you can see the pentagonal faces of a dodecahedron:
News: 7 Templates for Slide-Together Geometric Paper Constructions
The "slide-together" paper construction method is a fun and satisfying way to build 3D geometric objects. It only requires paper, scissors or an exacto knife, and some patience.