At Structure Studio, you can use the ITSPHUN building set to build your own mathematical structures. Colorful regular polygons connect at their edges through interlocking hooks to create elaborate three-dimensional structures. You can try copying the designs at the station to recreate your favorite Platonic or Archimedean solid, or simply explore and discover the interesting shapes you can make. The structures you can build are limited only by geometry and your imagination!
This is a dodecahedron. It has twelve faces. Each side is a regular pentagon.
With enough ITSPHUN pieces, you can create large structures.
Here are some of the fine folks on the ITSPHUN team. They are a small startup formed by a group of friends and family based out of Palo Alto, CA, Portland, OR, and Brussels, Belgium.
Constructing new and interesting mathematical objects, as one can do in this exhibit, came easily to Irish mathematician Alicia Boole Stott (1860 – 1940). With a deep understanding of higher-dimensional geometry, she is known among other things for having coined the term “polytope” for a convex solid in more than three dimensions.
