[PLUG-TALK] Geometry Question

[Bill Barry]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Richard C. Steffens <rsteff at comcast.net>wrote:

> My niece is very much into soccer. For Christmas, I want to make her a
> wooden soccer ball. I am not into soccer, but having Googled for it, I
> have found that a soccer ball is (I think) a truncated icosahedron,
> having 32 faces, 20 of which are hexagons, and 12 of which are
> pentagons. See:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_ball
>
> I can figure out how to cut the hexagons and pentagons out of wood. What
> I don't know is how to determine the angle of the edges based on the
> thickness of the wood. I think I'll use 1/2" thick lumber. If I were
> working with paper I'd just fold them and the angles would be whatever
> they felt like. Wood, at that size, doesn't bend so well. So, I'm trying
> to glue together these tiles, and it would be nice if the faces that get
> the glue were actually in the same plane.
>
>
Imagine it as one soccer ball suspended inside another with 1/2" separating
them. The difference in sizes of the outer pieces and the inner pieces will
tell you what the angles are.

Bill
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