Nandan Nair

Building an Icosahedron

0

Creativity can go a long way, especially in the classroom. It has the ability to take boring lessons and topics, and make them fun and enjoyable. With Christmas just around the corner, my chemistry teacher saw the perfect opportunity to use her creativity to the fullest. She gave me a unique project: Create a Christmas ornament in the form of an icosahedron, a prism with 20 faces, with information about an element in the periodic table. I got Nickel.

Creating an icosahedron with paper cutouts is an interesting project. There are many sites that can provide you with the details. We used one such template. The challenge is putting the icosahedron together as an ornament, because as you connect more triangles, the gap in the middle becomes smaller making it increasingly harder to get a stable structure.

The artist within me wanted to bring out all colors of the spectrum to reflect the seasons glory – starting with red at the top, then fading into yellow, green, blue, and ending with purple on the bottom. Despite the struggles, you can see that the final product came out well.

Creativity can go a long way, especially in the classroom. It has the ability to take boring lessons and topics, and make them fun and enjoyable. With Christmas just around the corner, my chemistry teacher saw the perfect opportunity to use her creativity to the fullest. She gave me a unique project: Create a Christmas […]

So, what do you think ?