Friday, February 1, 2008

The Rhombic Enneacontahedron



I recently finished a model of the Rhombic Enneacontahedron, the also known as the "zonohedrified dodecahedron". To own the truth, I have very little idea what it means to zonohedrify a polyhedron, but I do know that the dodecahedral "pattern" is very clear in this model. It has 90 faces: 60 wide rhombus faces and 30 slim. I built the model in 6 colors, with all the slim rhombi in orange and the rest in blue, red, purple, green, and yellow, with each color appearing once around each five-faced vertex. I think that if you stellated these faces you would come up with a compound of 5 dodecahedra, but I'm not entirely sure that it would be the compound of five dodecahedra.

Of course, the day after I finished this model, my little sister Ada decided that it would make a nice ball. She threw it into the air, where, due to the natural force of gravity, it did not stay, and instead returned to earth at once. Being a very spherical model, it caved in quite easily, but at least it landed on its bad side, and I was able to repair the damage. I will be more careful with this model from now on.

I have an entire collection of polyhedra (about 20) just waiting to be posted on, so keep checking this blog for updates (if anyone reads my blog, which I doubt).

And by the way, I will get a picture of the actual model up here soon.

UPDATE: I now have a picture of the actual model up. Photo credits go to Sam.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

In the second to last paragraph, you said "do to the natural force of gravity..." Correction: DUE to the blah, blah, blah...
That was fun. I love posting comments that only half make sense. (Like that one...I don't quite get it myself, but it's late and I'm lazy).

Nate said...

I just corrected that. Thx for pointing it out. Now you look very silly, reminding me of a mistake that is now corrected-Ha!

Unknown said...

Gee, thanks. I really appreciate it. No, really. I do. You might think I'm being sarcastic, but no, no, I really appreciate your (heh heh) thoughtfulness. :D

Unknown said...

These comments crack me up!