Large Phizz Buckyball

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I used a double episode of Lie to Me last week to fold 90 green phizz units.  I used the entire drive back from the coast on Sunday to fold 90 pink phizz units.  I folded 90 blue phizz units on Sunday night while watching Border Security, The Force and Bones.

The result:  270 phizz units.

Bag of phizz units

I started construction on Sunday night.

Three phizz units joined

The top pentagon

Top of phizz ball

Then I spent just about all of last night building it, and finished it this morning.

270-edge phizz buckyball

So there we have a 270-edge buckyball.  I actually don't know what this solid is called.  It has twelve pentagons for the apexes and seven hexagons on each of the twenty "faces" (the two edge ones are common to the adjoining faces).  

Rather than using blue paper for the pentagons and pink paper for the intervening hexagons (as seen in my previous balls), I decided to use three colours and make a Hamiltonian Path ball.  This effectively means that a colour never touches the same colour - always at the points there are the three different colours.  I'd tried this with a dodecahedron (which is pretty simple) and there are patterns floating around for doing it with truncated icosahedrons (here and here, although I think there's a mistake on that second link. Edit: looks like it's been fixed).  But I can't find anything for a ball this size.  So I had to wing it.  I expected it to be a nice double helix all the way around from top to bottom, starting with the top pentagon and finishing with the bottom pentagon.  But this wasn't the case.  Two-thirds of the way through, the loop doubled back on itself around a couple of the lower half pentagons and went the other way.  I'm still trying to figure out how to show this, as it really doesn't all fit in one photo and drawing a 3D shape like this is pretty complicated.  If I can figure out a way to do it I will.

So here's all my phizz balls.  I don't think I'll be making any more any time soon.
I still want have a techie post about them.. one day .. ;)

Phizz Balls


1 Comments

Missy said:

Be sure to pack them carefully before sending me one. Wouldn't want it damaged during the trip. ;-)

Nicely done! They look great.

April 13, 2011 1:09 AM

   

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I am a recent Canberra resident after having spent the first 34 years of my life in Sydney. I am married to my beautiful husband Stu, and we live with several computers and a lot of fish.

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