Newspaper Geodesic Dome

As I wrote about in my previous post, one of our Projects of the Month (being sent out this coming Friday) uses Google SketchUp to model a geodesic dome. One teacher contacted me about a similar project, in which you can create a dome from rolled-up sheets of newspaper:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/educator/act_geodesic_ho.html

One difference between this project and mine (aside from the fact that one is physical and one is virtual) is that the newspaper dome uses only two lengths of tubes (71 cm and 66 cm). The SketchUp version has edges of a several different lengths.

It would be an interesting project to take the SketchUp dome and calculate how many tubes you would need of which lengths, then build it. Let me know if you try this - I'd love to see pictures!


Anyone can design anything in 3D! www.3dvinci.net

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