Little mouse

Bead panda

Little Bear

Little yellow duck

Rhombic triacontahedron

I created this beaded model of rhombic triacontahedron this morning.

Longuet-Higgins' Rhombo blocks

When reading the book, "King of Infinite Space", a bibliography about the Canadian mathematician Donald Coxeter, a magnetic toys called Rhombo blocks mentioned in pages 251-252 caught my eye. According to the description in the book, it is some kind of toys very similar to the one, "ball of whacks", I bought a few months ago.

M. Longuet-Higgins was the inventor of Rhombo blocks. I checked Rhombo blocks after I got accessed to the internet (see the picture below) this morning. Indeed, the magnetic design of this toy is probably similar to the "ball of whacks". I guess that the difference is the shape between the two mainly. I am curious about who invented this kind of design first.

Again the Rhombo block is quite expensive, though.




One can also build a Kepler ball (Rhombic triacontahedron) using Rhombo blocks. Based on the following picture, it seems to me that only 10 blocks are needed.

Ball of whacks

I bought this ball of whacks in the Smithsonian store at Dullus airport, Wahsington D.C. last month.
This ball is basically a rhombic triacontahedron consisted of 30 magnetic design blocks.