Polyhedrons for the handicrafted crystallographer

Christmas is approaching fast and there might be still some green spots on the christmas tree or an empty space on the window sill. So, why not crafting something to fill up this space? This is were crystallography comes into play. The rich and (mostly) simple shapes of crystals make for some nice christmas decorations and can be crafted from all kinds of materials. In the following, I have collected some inspirational links for those who like crafting and crystallography. I also recommend some golden spray paint.

  • www.korthalsaltes.com has is a huge collection of polyhedral paper-cut models, ranging from simple tetrahedrons to stellated icosahedrons.
  • The web page mathcraft.wonderhowto.com has several inspirational posts on this:
    • Origami polyeder for those who are not fans of  „cutting edge technology“ (I apologize for the bad pun) can craft polyhedrons in a traditional asian fashion.
    • Playing cards polyeder a rather inspirational approach to craft some polyhedrons from a deck of cards
  • Straw polyhedra this is simple method to create simple polyhedra, although I have to admit that the icosahedron was too complicated for me.

I hope this gave you some inspirational ideas, if you have some more, post them in the comments below.