國語日報報導 (report from the Mandarin's Daily News)

昨天到科教館參加「探索化學世界」的開幕，碰到不少記者，也是第一次跟那麼多記者講話。國語日報記者陳祥麟與陳壁銘替我跟zometool準晶模型拍了幾張照片，寫了一個有關串珠的報導：

分子結構像串珠　教授動手做模型 (2012/12/30)

I met a few local reporters in the opening ceremony of "The wonderland of chemistry" held in the National Center for Science and Education yesterday. This was the first time I talked to so many reporters. A photographer from the Mandarin Daily News (國語日報), a traditional Chinese children's newspaper published daily in Taiwan (wiki), took a picture of me with the giant Zometool model of quasicrystal hung under the ceiling in the exhibition room. The reporters of the Mandarin Daily News also wrote a report about my bead models in Chinese.

Bucky Helmet

High-geneus fullerene by Mr. Horibe

I just got an email from Mr. Horibe with a link to his page, which gives many photos on the different stages of making a dodecahedral high-genus fullerene. It should be useful for anyone who wish to make this model.

Mr. Horibe also emailed me a beautiful picture of the backyard of his house in Tajimi. We took a picture together at the same place this June, without snow though.

Beaded trefoil knot using two beads per edge

I did a tryout using two beads per edge in this beaded molecule. Also, since these assorted glow-in-the-dark beads are one of the only few kinds of beads I have here in Boston, I try to take a picture of what it looks like in the dark after suitably charged with a light bulb. Thanks to Chun-Teh Chen (陳俊德) who helped me with the photography.

Oval shaped beads

I bought some plastic oval shaped beads a few months ago. I only made a buckyball with this kind of beads and never used them again. I saw these beads this afternoon accidentally and decided to make some more simple models with these oval shaped beads. So, here are five Platonic solids and a rhombic triacontahedron I made.

Giant beaded buckyball

I went to the 109th anniversary of TFGH yesterday and took a photo of this interesting giant buckyball.

D- and G-types TPMSs

28 groups of students from TFGH joined the competition designed by Ms. Chou and other teachers in the chemistry group of TFGH. They were asked to make any of these two complicated 3D models based on the slides I prepared for the G- and D-surfaces. It is still nontrivial for a beginner, who has no knowledge on the periodic minimal surfaces and graphitic structures. But most of them succeeded in creaking one of these two models. Unfortunately, when they asked local sellers about the suitable thickness of Nylon strings for 12mm beads. They were told that 0.6mm NyLong strings are best. That is why most of models they made are so soft and unable to stand on themselves. To solve the problem, students came up with the idea to hang these models on four legs of an upside-down desk they use for lectures.

However, one group discovered the cause to be the thickness of the Nylon string. Then students of that group changed the Nylon strings to 0.8mm. The two TPMS models they made are shown in the following photo. They look really nice and beautiful.

The one on the left is the G-surface. The one on the right side is the D-surface consisting of 16 helical strips. Using the decomposition technique Chern Chuang designed, we can use the same helical strips to create these two types of TPMSs.

Gyroidal Invinciball

A graphitic gyroid is a hyperbolic object. To make it, we need to introduce octagons at suitable positions on a graphitic sheet, which is similar to the pentagons in the spherical space such as buckyball. In some sense, we can view graphitic gyroid as a kind of "ball" in the hyperbolic space.

Students from the TFGH created this gyroidal invinciball in the hyperbolic space. Unfortunately, they used 0.6mm Nylon strings for the 12mm faceted beads. The structure is too soft to stand on its own.

Gyroidal National Flag of Republic of China (Taiwan)

I went to a special ceremony for the beading competition held in the Tapei First Girls High School this afternoon. I saw this amazing 3D flag model of my country, Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan), which is made by a suitable color code of octagons in a gyroidal graphene.

BTW, you can also interpret this flag as that of US.

Bead models and Omnitruncated dodecaplex for Math Education meeting

I had an exhibition for a local meeting on math education held in the math-astronomy building (數學天文館) of the National Taiwan University this weekend. Math-Astronomy building is close to the chemistry building, 積學館, where I am working. But I only have two tables for my beadworks. So I chose a few larger ones for this exhibition. The following pictures of my exhibition were taken from the Facebook of Ms. Helen Yu.

Helen also prepared a giant Zometool model, a 3-meter omni-truncated dodecaplex, for this meeting. More than 10 grad students from the theory group of chemistry department and a few students from the math department participated the final stage of this project one day before the meeting. We faced a number of problems during the construction due to the huge size of the model. It is hard for the model to hold its own weight especially when one tried to build the top first. But eventually, we solved almost all of the problems, except the final piece located at the North Pole of this model. Even though one of students is about 197 cm high, still we couldn't fix that one. Fortunately, it is not easy to notice it. So, we decided to leave it slightly incomplete because the model will be dismantled after a week of display in the mathematics/astronomy building.