Uploaded May 2020 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
Construction Notes:
This is geometrically a large rhombic triacontahedron, a sphere like polyhedron made of 30 identical rhombus or diamond shaped faces all around it. I made use of this computer generated design of one built from icosidodecahedrons, but replaced most of them with tubes:
youtu.be/_A9PYaf9r3o
I used small reinforced icosidodecahedron spheres made from 180 balls each, and tubes of 5 rings of 10 balls to form the complete molecular style frame. There are 32 mini spheres in total, 12 of one polarity with 5 tube attachments, and 20 spheres of the other polarity with 3 tube attachments. A total of 60 tubes are interconnected across only the pentagonal faces of the mini spheres to form the rhombic triacontahedron geometry. Tubes of an odd number of rings of 10 are required to make the spheres line up correctly. I tried building this shape with tubes of length 7 rings, but it was too unstable and collapsed shortly after construction. Length 5 works just right and makes a strong, stable build. It will sit nicely on a face of 4 spheres and 4 tubes, but to orient it with pentagonal sphere points vertical, I added 5 tubes (of rings of 10) 6 balls long to 5 spheres around the pentagonal vertex sphere at the bottom to form a base, which holds the whole structure up nicely.
Total use of gold on the surface of the mini spheres was 10 × 12 [pentagonal vertex spheres] and 6 × 20 [triangular vertex spheres] = 240 yellow gold balls.
A total magnet count of 32 × 180 [mini spheres] + 60 × 10 × 5 [tubes] = 8760.
5 × 10 × 6 [extra legs] = +300 extra magnets for holding up the sphere vertically, giving another total of 9060 neodymium magnetic balls (diameter 5mm).
Music track is Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie, from the YouTube free audio library.
#ledwatchman #Neocube #Neoballs #Nanodots #ZenMagnets #Speks #Buckyballs #NingoBalls #CyberCube #KlikyBalls #NeoQube
Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: chriszabriskie.com/cylinders
Artist: chriszabriskie.com
Construction Notes:
This is geometrically a large rhombic triacontahedron, a sphere like polyhedron made of 30 identical rhombus or diamond shaped faces all around it. I made use of this computer generated design of one built from icosidodecahedrons, but replaced most of them with tubes:
youtu.be/_A9PYaf9r3o
I used small reinforced icosidodecahedron spheres made from 180 balls each, and tubes of 5 rings of 10 balls to form the complete molecular style frame. There are 32 mini spheres in total, 12 of one polarity with 5 tube attachments, and 20 spheres of the other polarity with 3 tube attachments. A total of 60 tubes are interconnected across only the pentagonal faces of the mini spheres to form the rhombic triacontahedron geometry. Tubes of an odd number of rings of 10 are required to make the spheres line up correctly. I tried building this shape with tubes of length 7 rings, but it was too unstable and collapsed shortly after construction. Length 5 works just right and makes a strong, stable build. It will sit nicely on a face of 4 spheres and 4 tubes, but to orient it with pentagonal sphere points vertical, I added 5 tubes (of rings of 10) 6 balls long to 5 spheres around the pentagonal vertex sphere at the bottom to form a base, which holds the whole structure up nicely.
Total use of gold on the surface of the mini spheres was 10 × 12 [pentagonal vertex spheres] and 6 × 20 [triangular vertex spheres] = 240 yellow gold balls.
A total magnet count of 32 × 180 [mini spheres] + 60 × 10 × 5 [tubes] = 8760.
5 × 10 × 6 [extra legs] = +300 extra magnets for holding up the sphere vertically, giving another total of 9060 neodymium magnetic balls (diameter 5mm).
Music track is Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie, from the YouTube free audio library.
#ledwatchman #Neocube #Neoballs #Nanodots #ZenMagnets #Speks #Buckyballs #NingoBalls #CyberCube #KlikyBalls #NeoQube
Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: chriszabriskie.com/cylinders
Artist: chriszabriskie.com
