Uploaded April 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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I got inspired by Magnenaut's recent tutorial video upload, to revisit the truncated icosahedron geometric form:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZiDyszxrmLU
The truncated icosahedron is so named because it can be described as an icosahedron with all 12 pentagonal vertices cut off at the 1/3 point of each triangular face. It is best known from the familiar round football shape, but is also known for the geometry of the buckyball or C60 molecule. It has 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces (32 total) and is also geodesic, forming points on a circumscribed sphere at its vertices.
This magnet version was made from exactly 8582 5mm neodymium ball magnets, with edges of 9 balls or 45mm, and is the largest I could make using almost my entire magnet collection at the time. It is the size of a youth soccer ball (size 4), about 21 cm in diameter. It should be possible to make a full size 5 soccer ball (22-23 cm diameter) on the same design principles with enough extra magnets, but I ran out.

Music track is Old Vienna by Endless Love, from the YouTube free music library.

#ledwatchman #Neocube #Neoballs #Nanodots #ZenMagnets #Speks #Buckyballs #NingoBalls #CyberCube #KlikyBalls #NeoQube