珠璣科學(Zhu-Ji Science)

In the November issue of Science Monthly (科學月刊), I wrote the sixth article of the Zhu-Ji Science series (珠璣科學). This one is about the particular problem of "30 small balls cover a big ball" from the Japanese temple geometry.

金必耀, 左家靜, 珠璣科學─日本寺廟幾何與正十二面體串珠模型 (Zhuji Science - Japanese temple geometry and the bead model of regular dodecahedron), 科學月刊 2012, 33(11).

NTU newsletter: Chemist Builds Intricate Nanomolecular Models with Beads

I was told by a secretary of Science school of the NTU (National Taiwan University) early this year that they wanted to write about the beaded molecules. But I didn't know that they really wrote something in the June issue of NTU newsletter until now.

Another way to view D surface

There is another way to partition the D-surface to its constituents. It looks quite different.

It would be interesting to compare these pictures with the bead model of D surface Wei-Chi made:

(http://www.ams.org/mathimagery/displayimage.php?album=32&pid=418#top_display_media, AMS Math Imagery)

P, G, and D surfaces

I am planning to have a project with students and teachers of TFG (Taipei) school later this month to construct Gyroidal and D surfaces together. It could be a difficult task because the gyroidal structure is probably the most complicated bead structure Chern and I have ever made. A simple tutorial on the three-dimensional structure of a gyroidal surface and how it can be decomposed into several basic and easily weaved units seems to be useful. So I am now preparing some slides to make the project work out smoothly. Here is one of the slides about the famous P-, D- and G-types Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) which I generated with matlab:

Additionally, Chern, Wei-Chi, Chia-Chin and I also have a paper jointly for the Bridges meeting last summer. Chern made the presentation. I didn't attend it, though. This paper describes the bead models of these three structures quite generally.

Chuang, C.; Jin, B.-Y.; Wei, W.-C.; Tsoo, C.-C. "Beaded Representation of Canonical P, D, and G Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces", Proceedings of Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science, 2012, 503-506.

Beaded Hilbert Curve (Step Two)

A couple of years ago I made a (half of a) Hilbert curve, as I recall it was inspired by a conversation with Bih-Yaw. And soon I forgot about this and went on to other beaded molecules. It was at the Bridges this year that I came across the 3D-printed sculptures of Dr. Henry Segermen. Then I decided to make another beaded model for this amazing mathematical figure.

I finished submitting this, together with a short introduction on both the novelty of the beading technique and the curve itself, to the Joint Mathematics Meeting 2013, which will be held in San Diego next January. I don't think I could physically be there at the meeting, though.

Animated dodecahedral beaded structure by Horibe-San

Mr. Horibe (Horibe-San) just informed me a beautiful beaded structure he made with a single string! The address is here: http://horibe.jp/JPGBOX/3540BOX/Beads3540_ss.htm.

BTW, he also made an animated sequence of the whole beading procedure using Javascript for this structure. We can see how he managed to make each node sequentially along a Hamiltonian path on 12 vertices of a dodecahedron and a Hamiltonian path through each face within a node. It looks great!