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September 07, 2007
How much is enough Geomag?
I have been faunching after Geomag, the magnetic building toy, since first discovering it at a friend's house. But it's very expensive and I didn't just want a little. Oh, no. And I didn't want a knock-off, though some of the clones are as strong as Geomag (and nearly as expensive).
A couple of weeks ago, I discovered an eBay seller, selling new, presumably discontinued packs, at just a shade over a quarter of their RRP. So I have bought some. Quite a bit, in fact, though not in the leagues of the people who are serious about this.
Today was the first day that I really got the chance to play with it; I'd made some simple objects (such as the stellated icosahedron known as Spikey) but I hadn't really tried building stuff. By 'stuff', of course, I mean, mathematically interesting models. And I thought a nice model to start with would be the 3d analogue of the Sierpinski gasket; which also has a cute name, the Tetrix.
Well, obviously I had plenty of Geomag for n=1, 2 and 3. But n=4 requires 384 rods, which is still slightly beyond me. The photo here shows 3/4 of n=4. Over on Flickr is a chap who has the 1536 rods necessary for n=5 and is saving up for n=6. As an aside, sierpinski is one of the most fun single-word searches I've ever done on Flickr. There are printouts, graphics, drawings, blankets, quilts, statues, sculptures from pepsi cans, cookies, gardens and memorials. And the Triforce.
Yes, I've bought enough Geomag to finish the job. Yes, I know that I will discover that I don't have enough Geomag for the next job. I'll worry about that later.
Posted by Alison Scott at September 7, 2007 01:18 PM
Comments
Ooh, I like the Sierpinski cookies.
Posted by: Dalmeny at September 7, 2007 02:23 PM