Conference Workshop

A three-hour workshop by Jim Olsen (Western Illinois University). The title of the workshop is "The Beauty of Three-Dimensional Polyhedra."

Description:  I have long been fascinated by the Platonic and Archimedean solids and their mathematical beauty. In this workshop I will demonstrate, and we will work with, a variety of materials I’ve come across over the years for building polyhedra. For example, we’ll build with coffee stirrers (really cheap, less than 10¢ for the icosahedron), origami (about 25¢ for the Buckyball), and retail manipulatives (a few dollars for the truncated tetrahedron). We will also look at some online tools for exploring (and enjoying) the Platonic and Archimedean solids and their mathematical relationships and properties. These dynamic tools are useful is seeing how, for example, the snub icosidodecahedron is formed. (Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop or device to the workshop.) Included will be how the icosahedron (this is the MAA!) can be built using three golden rectangles. This is the workshop I gave at the MAA Centennial at MathFest last August.