Sunday, July 31, 2011
Truncated Icosahedron: AKA Soccer Ball
As I was recently watching an episode of "Through The Wormhole" on the Science Channel I thought of an idea for my high school Principles of Engineering class. This project could potentially be introduced within the first few days of class as a quick team-building exercise. The general idea is to create a truncated icosahedron using Autodesk Inventor (3-D modeling program). The basic premise is to have each team or individual figure out how to create the object using mathematical formulas found in their textbooks or from reliable internet sources. Other parameters may be set up by the teacher to make the project more difficult.
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This project involved a lot of logical thinking and troubleshooting for you when something went wrong on the soccer ball like shape. Overall I liked the idea of this project, it challenged your brain to find reliable sources and figure out even what a truncated icosahedron was. Through construction of this, Mr. Besler was very helpful but didn’t give us all the answers. Although the figure could be very frustrating to figure out, it was a good way to start the brain to flow again after being on summer vacation. I’d like to do more projects like these.
ReplyDeleteIthought this project would be much easier than it actually is. Making the basic shapes was not difficult, but getting them all to fit together properly wasn't as easy. There was a lot to consider with the angle of the parts and their spacing from eachother. Over-all it isn't too hard, it just takes time to figure out.
ReplyDeleteI felt that this was a interesting project. It was neat at first like building a soccerball and all. I felt it was going to be like anything else "yeah put stuff together get a grade and move on". Then...it became very, very, very frustrating. After a certain point in construction none of the pieces would fit to gether. I constantly went back to make adjustments to my pieces and that still didnt work. I can only constrain 4-5 pieces before autodesk goes "sorry i cant do that because im like that". Even after doing my research and asking questions there still wasnt any soccerball in sight. Ironically i think the first time around was my most sucessful attempt. I mad.
ReplyDeleteby the way excalibur is geoffrey
ReplyDeleteThe project was to design a truncated icosahedron by using pentagons, hexagons, brackets and pins. At the beginning of the project it seemed nearly impossible to answer the question that was asked to us. After using various websites for resources such as Wikipedia and other various math information websites to obtain the angles that we would use for the brackets. Our teacher Mr. Besler assigned each of us a length that would be the length of one side of our polygons. My length was 1.25 inches. It was had to design the shapes and correctly dimension the size of the shapes. The next task of creating two brackets that would connect hexagon to pentagon and hexagon to hexagon were slightly more difficult. Through trial and error of adjusting the sizes of the bracket the sizes were finalized and put into a standard iam to be put together. Making the pin to be put into the holes of the brackets and polygons was the easiest task to do. Putting my hole size as .125 in made it easy to create and place the pins during the assembly phase of the project. This projection my opinion it started out difficult with little information but progressive go easier as the project was closer to being completed.
ReplyDeleteI feel the project and consisted of a lot of research, but other than that, it was a pretty simple/straight forward construction.
ReplyDeleteI liked the project, I had used the program three years ago so this was a good way to relearn the skills I lost in Inventor. It was a pretty difficult assignment because there were so many different parts that need to be assembled. More than often I had to backtrack after a piece wouldn't go where I needed it to go because certain constraints I had used to connect other parts wouldn't allow it. All in all the assignment was a good refresher on the program and gave me an understanding of what to expect for the year ahead.
ReplyDeleteThe truncated iscohedron was a very hard project, but it was also boring. It took a long time to make the parts and I had to stay after. Although it was boring it was very challenging because I had never seen this shape in geometry or anything. Many people had different ideas on how to do this project but none of them seemed to have worked. It confused everyone, and the short amount of time given to complete it didn't help either. From this project I have learned that this class is a lot harder than the past 2 engieering courses and is to be taken more seriously. I am looking forward to more advanced projects in this class.
ReplyDeleteThe project we were recently working on was a truncated icosahedron. A truncated icosahedron is a 3D shape made out of hexagons and pentagons. We had to make the individual part on inventor and assemble them in an inventor assembly. We had to make hexagons, pentagons, and two different brackets to put them together. At the beginning of the project Mr. Besler gave us each different side lengths and told use to Google everything else. We had to Google the rest of the information about the shape. The overall project was very difficult even though everyone knew exactly how to make it. The hard part was making everything the right size and once you got everything the right size it was relatively easy to put together.
ReplyDeletetest comment yea
ReplyDeletethis project was actually pretty fun, the hardest part was commenting on this blog. But anyways it was fun and a teambuilding exercise.
ReplyDeleteP.S. subscribe to my blog.
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