We’ve done a lot of projects relating to platonic solids and dodecahedrons in particular. A really neat fact about dodecahedrons is that you can use the verticies to put 5 cubes inside!
It isn’t just a mathematical “fun fact” either – the symmetry groups involved play roles in important mathematical theorems.
For today’s project I wanted to explore one cube in a dodecahedron and look at the relationship between the rotations of the cube and the rotations of the dodecahedron.
We started by looking at the dodecahedron by itself:
Next we moved to looking at the cube in the dodecahedron and studied what rotating the dodecahedron did to the cube:
Finally we looked at some 3d printed models that we made to see if these models helped us explore the rotations a bit more:
I was a little disappointed that I made the 3d printed models a bit too small, but I still like how this project went. I’m going to try again with some slightly larger models with my older son.
Mike's Math Page 