great-rhombicosidodecahedron
The best remaining picture I have of a 510-unit construct I assembled during February 2008. At the time, it was the biggest thing I had ever put together.
Though you may see a ball here (or, if you're more mathematically inclined, an object with the same convex hull as a great rhombicosidodecahedron), what I see is just twenty triangular cupolae separated by 30 triangular prisms.
The very sharp angles for some of the edges in each cupola made assembly difficult. Basically I went one-unit-at-a-time, and through trial and error learned a "cupola assembly order" that minimized the amount of struggling I had to go through to get some of the flaps into their sharply-angled pockets.
The thing is obviously glued. I had to, or the slight distortion inherent in the angles of the unit would have caused it to fall apart during the assembly process.
Forgive me for putting the text there. This picture was originally part of a brochure, and I'm new to the whole "save your text in separate layers" thing.
Update: here's a much better picture of the same object.
great-rhombicosidodecahedron
The best remaining picture I have of a 510-unit construct I assembled during February 2008. At the time, it was the biggest thing I had ever put together.
Though you may see a ball here (or, if you're more mathematically inclined, an object with the same convex hull as a great rhombicosidodecahedron), what I see is just twenty triangular cupolae separated by 30 triangular prisms.
The very sharp angles for some of the edges in each cupola made assembly difficult. Basically I went one-unit-at-a-time, and through trial and error learned a "cupola assembly order" that minimized the amount of struggling I had to go through to get some of the flaps into their sharply-angled pockets.
The thing is obviously glued. I had to, or the slight distortion inherent in the angles of the unit would have caused it to fall apart during the assembly process.
Forgive me for putting the text there. This picture was originally part of a brochure, and I'm new to the whole "save your text in separate layers" thing.
Update: here's a much better picture of the same object.