Bridges 2011

I gave a talk this morning on the designing sculpture inspired by high-genus fullerenes with mathematical beading (pdf file) in the Bridges conference (Coimbra, Portugal).



Here are some bead models I brought to this meeting. These include three large pieces (a dodecahedra, a tetrahedron, and a trefoil knot), four TCNTs (120, 140, 240), and around 25 C60s.

High-genus fullerene

I am working on a new bead model of high-genus fullerene for the coming Bridges conference in Coimbra. The 12 necks of this model consists of 8-member rings. The inner part is done. But one still needs to weave the remaining outer part.

(High-genus fullerene with octagonal necks, No:4)

I gave this model to Prof. Reza Sarhangi for permanent display in Towson university in the 2011 Bridge conference. (20120326)

One more trefoil knot

Chern and Yuan-Chia made this bead model of trefoil this May. This one has a C2 rotational symmetry which is absent in the one I posted previously.



I gave this model to Prof. Wen-Yuan Qiu (Lan-Zhou University) when I was in An-Hui, He-Fei at the end of this May. He is an expert on the DNA polyhedra and gave me his book entitled "The Chemistry and Mathematics of DNA polyhedra" as a gift.

Carbon onion with zometool

We made a molecular model for the carbon onion consisting of six layers of concentric icosahedral fullerenes: C20, C80, C180, C320, C500, C720. This structure contains about 1820 balls and 2730 sticks. Some more extra sticks are used to connect different layers too.

A few bead models of T120s

Here are the bead models of toroidal carbon nanotubes consisting of 120 carbon atoms students made in the second morning of this activity.

Summer camp 2011

I offered a summer camp (繽紛多彩石墨烯─結構與模型, Amazing graphitic structures or here) on creating structures and models of graphitic materials using a number of different techniques for high-school students in Taichung these few days (7/5-7/7).
Three different techniques we used in this mini-workshop are the mathematical beading (one and half days), modular origami based on PHiZZ units (half day) and zometool (half day).

1. 7/5 morning: Students learned the structures of Platonic solids and created bead models of tetrahedron, cube, dodecahedron (C20), and C24. I found that it is very useful to construct these simple trivalent Platonic solids first using beads with rod-like shape. With this, students can become familiar with the basic technique of right-angle weave.
2. The projects for the 7/5 afternoon is to construct bead models of C60 and C80. Most students can finish these projects in three hours.
3. 7/6 morning: Chern spent an hour to explain the molecular structures with jmol (a powerful program for visualizing any kind of molecular structure) first. Particularly, we use C60, T120 and so on as examples. In the next two hours, students started to make bead model of T120. All students succeeded in making their own beaded T120.
4. 7/6 afternoon: We switched to modular origami using PHiZZ units. The only project for this part is to make a dodecahedron.
5. We planned to build a giant concentered multilayer carbon onion consisting of 6 layer of icosahedral fullerenes using the Zometool tomorrow morning (7/7).



Participants:
1. TAs: Chern Chuang, Yuan-Chia Fan and Qian-Rui Huang.
2. twelve students from Taipei (2), Taichung (5), Changhua (4), and Tainan (1)..

Here are a few photos from the camp.






Two T120s that were constructed by students: