Monday, September 29, 2014

Truss models of cubic and hexagonal closest packings

I made two more bead models of two-layer cuboctahedron and twisted cuboctahedron (anticuboctahedron) to illustrate the vector equilibrium of Buckminster Fuller. Through these two models, the connection to the cubic and hexagonal closest packings can also be visualized more easily.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Two icosahedral complexes derived from an icosahedron

Starting from a bead model of icosahedron, one can make a few beautiful rigid polyhedral complexes by adding more regular octahedra and tetrahedra surrounding the central icosahedron. Here are two examples:

Icosahedron + Icosidodecahedron


Icosahedron + Icosidodecahedron + Rhombic Hexecontahedron