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Dear YES Mag,
As a variation on your Geodesic Dome we thought it would be nice
to continue and build the full sphere. We were curious if it would
be possible to build the sphere and check it's strength.
We made some small changes to the general instructions.
First we opted to use a half size news paper so that the dome would
actually fit in our lounge. shorter tubes also means stronger tubes.
To get the correct diameter tubes we used a simple pencil for the
first few windings after which we removed the pencil and continued
rolling. On other web-sites we found a simple calculation that would
allow us to make any size tubes. Simply multiply the length of the
long tube by 0.89 to get the length of the short one. Instead of
staples we used split-pens because they allow for a more accurate
construction.
Even though the length of the tubes could vary
a little, the distance between the holes for the split-pens was
measured precisely. Note that the length calculation above applies
to the distance between the holes and not the tube length.
We found the project a lot of fun to do and gazed
in awe at the finished sphere for quite some time while pointing
out the Hexagons, Pentagons and Great circles. Congratulations on
such a great way to play with geometry. Please find attached this
picture of the completed sphere to your web-site. Once posted I
will tell the principal of my son's school to check it out as I
am sure they will want to repeat the project.
Construction of the Sphere is quite difficult
and will require some planning, proper plan reading (Your illustrations
are great) and most of all, team work even more so that with the
Dome. Total cost of the project: $1 for the split pens (Which were
retrieved afterwards anyway).
Kind regards
Fam van Dinther
Auckland, New Zealand |
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