A few weeks a go I saw this shape in a display case at the MIT math department:
The shape is mislabled, unfortunately, it is an icosidodecahedron. We’ve already done a few projects based on the shape. Last week’s project is here:
A zometool follow up to our Cuboctohedron Project
And there’s our fun Zometool Snowman, too, where the icosidodecahedron is the head:
The name suggests that it is made from a combination of an icosahedron and a dodecahedron – but how?
Ahead of the project I made a few shapes:
(i) the icosidodecahedron
(ii) a dodecahedron with an icosahedron removed
(iii) an icosahedron with a dodecahedron removed
Here’s what the boys thought of those shapes:
Next we went upstairs to play with some code in the F3 program. Looking at the video now I see that I forgot to publish it hi def – sorry about that. I hope our explanation of the code is good enough if the code is too fuzzy to read:
Definitely a fun little project – it is so fun to be able to play with these shapes on the computer and then hold them in your hand!
Look up permutahedron on thingiverse!
The dual one is almost the exact shape made by 3 perpendicular intersecting cylinders:
http://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=permutahedron&sa=