Description
Engage your mathematical imaginations and make models and nested models of amazing shapes.
Platonic Solids are composed of polygons — all the same shape. Several of the Platonic Solids are familiar: the tetrahedron, the cube, and the octahedron. The icosahedron and dodecahedron are less familiar. Then we will turn to the brilliant, complex Archimedean Solids. These shapes are made of more than one polygon. Many are truncated or trimmed-off Platonic Solids, as in the truncated cube, the truncated octahedron, and the truncated icosahedron (aka, the soccer ball). Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BCE) discovered these geometric forms, but models of these shapes were lost until 1619 when Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician, reimagined them. In this hands-on course, we will rediscover them, too. We’ll build shapes to make Archimedes smile.
John Chamberlain is a retired English teacher.