Uploaded October 2012 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The towers (different stages of building the tower shown first) are supported by some extra rings of 9 magnets. There are 3 different heights for the units in these towers, 7 out of 19 vertical pillars, including the center one, touch the ground, 6 of them are a little higher supported by 3 rings of 9 and 6 of them are even higher, supported by 6 rings of 9, of which 1 ring has been placed with equal polarity to create a little extra height needed to get all supports touch the ground neatly.
Also, there are unsupported structures, of which there are 2 rhombic dodecahedra, with size 1 and 2 diamond faces.
The lattice is the I-WP surface and can also be seen as a variety on the P-surface. When you take the cubic cell from the P-surface as shown on the Minimal Surface page from Ken Brakke (see link below) and skew it into a parallelepiped with 6 equal diamond faces, then it is possible to create a new tunnel between the 2 (of 8) spherical sections nearest to each other. When doing this everywhere in the P-surface, you get 8 tunnels starting from every chamber instead of 6. The same effect you get when placing octahedra in space, ensuring that each triangular face faces another triangle from a neighboring octahedron, but facing with a 60 degree rotation.
The page from Ken Brakke: http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/examples/periodic/periodic.html
The towers (different stages of building the tower shown first) are supported by some extra rings of 9 magnets. There are 3 different heights for the units in these towers, 7 out of 19 vertical pillars, including the center one, touch the ground, 6 of them are a little higher supported by 3 rings of 9 and 6 of them are even higher, supported by 6 rings of 9, of which 1 ring has been placed with equal polarity to create a little extra height needed to get all supports touch the ground neatly.
Also, there are unsupported structures, of which there are 2 rhombic dodecahedra, with size 1 and 2 diamond faces.
The lattice is the I-WP surface and can also be seen as a variety on the P-surface. When you take the cubic cell from the P-surface as shown on the Minimal Surface page from Ken Brakke (see link below) and skew it into a parallelepiped with 6 equal diamond faces, then it is possible to create a new tunnel between the 2 (of 8) spherical sections nearest to each other. When doing this everywhere in the P-surface, you get 8 tunnels starting from every chamber instead of 6. The same effect you get when placing octahedra in space, ensuring that each triangular face faces another triangle from a neighboring octahedron, but facing with a 60 degree rotation.
The page from Ken Brakke: http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/examples/periodic/periodic.html
