Science Gift Ideas: Zome Tool

ZomeTool’s connector balls are small rhombicosidodecahedrons

ZomeTool’s connector balls are
small rhombicosidodecahedrons

I started playing with Zome Tool after watching the college lecture series Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas on DVD, which required no mathematical background and I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning about why Math totally rocks from a humanistic perspective. I wanted to try out some of the geometrical concepts the lecture series talked about and needed a construction set that would suit this need.

Zome Tool is like an errector set, only incredibly geometrically well thought-out. The vertices, connector balls, for the Zome Tool are small rhombicosidodecahedrons, one of the 13 types of Archmedean Solids (this link has 3-D examples that you can rotate). This means that there are three types of connections for the edges, a pentagon, rectangle, and equilateral triangle; and for this reason, the edge pieces come in three different color-coded types.

The length of these edge pieces are related to one another along the Golden Mean, a proportion found throughout nature, art, and architecture, and one that allowed me to build three interlaced golden rectangles inside an icosahedron.

Icosahedron with Three Interlaced Golden Rectangles

Icosahedron with Three Interlaced Golden Rectangles

I later added another layer to this, by putting the icosahedron inside the dodecahedron with it’s verticies touching the middle of each of the dodecahedron’s faces.

Also on a Holiday note, check out a Zome Christmas Tree


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