{"id":1145,"date":"2013-11-09T13:14:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T21:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2013-11-09T23:12:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-10T07:12:46","slug":"new-spine-towers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/liberation-geometry\/new-spine-towers\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick building workshop – 11.09.2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black<\/a>

Stacks of black + white tetrahedrons awaiting assembly at the IFF for community building workshop.<\/p><\/div>\n

These elegant towers of stacked tetrahedrons are the modular units from which we’ll be constructing a large-scale-model in Jake’s building workshop this afternoon. Made from 12 inch bamboo sticks, each tetrahedron consists of six sticks arranged with either a clockwise or anti clockwise rotation at each vertex. The innate chirality<\/em>\u00a0or \u00a0handedness<\/em>\u00a0of the tetrahedra causes stacks of these units to twist \u00a0into either a clockwise-spiraling triple helix, or an anticlockwise-spiraling triple helix. Chirality also has fundamental consequences for Dotson’s building methodology. If one builds solely from single handed tetrahedrons (what we can call homo-chirality), the resulting large scale structures will naturally curve and ultimately form into balls. If we mix left-handed and right-handed tetrahedrons, flat structures can be achieved. The choice of homo- or hetro-chirality has global architectural consequences.<\/p>\n

\"Jake<\/a>

Jake with spine towers awaiting assembly.<\/p><\/div>\n

Below are pictures from the workshop. We were delighted to host a visit from Charles Long’s “Workshop Art” class from the University of California, Riverside. Students proved to be both adept and inventive: some followed Jakes purely algorithmic vision, other branched out on their own and went non-linear.<\/p>\n

\"Workshop<\/a>

Workshop participants assembling modules.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"P1160562\"<\/a>

Workshop participants constructing left and rich handed tetrahedrons for assembly into a larger network.<\/p><\/div>\n

Children typically subvert algorithmic instructions and have no fear about launching off on their own. 9 year old Jaquell Weinraub \u00a0was no exception; he happily ignored his elders and went about building a starship.<\/p>\n

\"Jaquell<\/a>

Jaquell Weinraub building a starship.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Jaquell's<\/a>

Jaquell’s starship.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Margaret<\/a>

Margaret Wertheim and Tracy diligently assembling left-handed tetrahedrons.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Sheet<\/a>

Sheet of interlinking tetrahedrons.<\/p><\/div>\n

When linking tetrahedrons together, a critical issue is the chirality of the modules. Here, the black tetrahedrons have vertices whose ends spiral in an anti-clockwise fashion, while the white tetrahedrons have \u00a0vertices that spiral clockwise. By slotting together vertices of alternating chirality one can construct a large \u00a0flat sheet. Note that the basic lattice structure here is hexagonal – commensurate with a Euclidean surface. Like a flat sheet of paper, these Euclidean trusses can be rolled into a cylinder.<\/p>\n

\"Rolling<\/a>

Rolling a sheet of tetrahedra into a cylinder.<\/p><\/div>\n

–Margaret Wertheim, Institute For Figuring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These elegant towers of stacked tetrahedrons are the modular units from which we’ll be constructing a large-scale-model in Jake’s building workshop this afternoon. Made from 12 inch bamboo sticks, each tetrahedron consists of six sticks arranged with either a clockwise or anti clockwise rotation at each vertex. The innate chirality\u00a0or \u00a0handedness\u00a0of the tetrahedra causes stacks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberation-geometry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiff.org\/current\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}