Models of Regular Polyhedra

One of the most common forms of geometric model-making involves construction of the five Platonic solids, and of various related symmetric three-dimensional polyhedra. The most common construction methods involve folding and gluing together cut-out paper polygons, but some of these model-builders have carved their polyhedra from solid materials.

• Bamboo C.O.R.P.S.. Durable bamboo models of the Platonic and Archimedean polyhedra, offered for sale.

• Beezer's PlayDome. Rob Beezer makes truncated icosahedra out of old automobile tires.

• Breaking Bonds. Geometric sculpture by Stephen Luecking combining buckyball, hexagon, and amorphous shapes of carbon molecules.

• Cardahedra. Business card polyhedral origami.

• Andrew Crompton. Grotesque geometry, Tessellations, Lifelike Tilings, Escher style drawings, Dissection Puzzles, Geometrical Graphics, Mathematical Art. Anamorphic Mirrors, Aperiodic tilings, Optical Machines.

• Die-cast metal polyhedra available for sale from Pedagoguery Software.

• Dodecahedral melon and other fruit polyhedra, by Vi Hart.

• Glass dodecahedron. Custom-made for Clive Tooth by Bob Aurelius.

• High school buckyball art. Kerry Stefancyk, Allison Cahill, and Jessica Smith make polyhedral models out of stained glass.

• Interlocking puzzle pieces and other geometric toys.

• Jovo Click 'n Construct. Plastic click-together triangular, square, and pentagonal tiles for building models of polyhedra and polygonal tilings. Includes a mathematical model gallery showing examples of shapes constructable from Jovo.

• Landry Art, Escheresque tessellations, and balsa and paper polyhedra, including some prints, t-shirts, and models available for purchase.

• Tom Lechner's Sculptures. Lechner makes geometric models from wood, water, plexiglass, and steel.

• Materialized Mathematical Models. Jan de Koning exercises his furniture-making skills by making wood, plastic, stone and steel polyhedra.

• Modular pie-cosahedron. Turkey Tek makes geometric models out of pecan pie.

• Octacube. Stainless steel 3d model of the 24-cell (one of the six regular polytopes in four dimensions), by Adrian Ocneanu, installed as a sculpture in the Penn State Math Department. Includes also a shockwave flythrough of the model.

• Origami polyhedra. Jim Plank makes geometric constructions by folding paper squares.

• Paperforms. John Vonachen uses laser cutters and spray paint to make and sell paper models of polyhedra, stellated polyhedra, polyhedral complexes, Sierpinski tetrahedra, etc.

• The pavilion of polyhedreality. George Hart makes geometric constructions from coffee stirrers and dacron thread. Includes many pointers to related web pages.

• Polycell. George Olshevsky makes and sells polyhedra from colored cardstock.

• Polyedergarten. Ulrich Mikloweit makes polyhedral models out of colored typewriter paper, cut into lace so you can see the internal structure.

  

• Polyhedra plaited with paper strips, H. B. Meyer. See also Jim Blowers' collection of plaited polyhedra.

• Polyhedral solids. Ray-traced images by Tom Gettys, and a primer on constructing paper models.

• Polyhedron man. Nice article from Ivars Peterson's Mathland about George Hart and his polyhedral art.

• Rhombic triacosiohedron. Pretty model of a nonconvex genus-11 polyhedron with 300 congruent faces.

• Rob's polyhedron models, made with the help of his program Stella.

• Snub cube and dodecahedron. Rob Moeser makes geometric constructions by carving broccoli stalks.

• Stained glass icosidodecahedron and rhombicosidodecahedron, Helen & Liam Striker.

• Starpage. Art-deco paper models of stellated polyhedra, by merrill.

• 30 computers. Forrest McCluer makes polyhedral sculptures out of discarded electronics.

• Truncated icosahedral symmetry. Explains why you might want to use a machined aluminum buckyball as a gravity-wave detector...

  

• Truncated Nano-Octahedron. Ned Seeman makes polyhedra out of DNA molecules.

• Tune's polyhedron models. Sierpinski octahedra, stellated icosahedra, interlocking zonohedron-dissection puzzles, and more.

• 270-strut tensegrity sphere. Jim Leftwich makes polyhedra out of dowels and hairbands.

• Unfolding polyhedra. A common way of making models of polyhedra is to unfold the faces into a planar pattern, cut the pattern out of paper, and fold it back up. Is this always possible?

• Walt's toy box. Walt Venables collects geometric toys, and uses them to help design geodesic domes.

• Fr. Magnus Wenninger, OSB, mathematician, builder of polyhedra.

• Wooden ball-and-stick models of Archimedean solids, offered for sale by Dr. B's Science Basics.

• Wooden polyhedra from Japan (but with English explanations). And more, in Japanese.

• The world's largest icosahedron. Jason Rosenfeld makes polyhedra out of ten foot poles and shark fishing line.

• Vedder Wright makes geometric models out of plastic forks.