Pacific Domes
29Mar2008 07:03 AM Filed in: Geometry-Math
A long overdue thanks
to local friend and colleauge Asha who has been
graciously hosting our local Geometers group (we
whimsically call ourselves the "Hedronists" as well)
for many months. (Also thanks to local friend and
colleauge Libby who offered similar gracious
hosting for many months prior!) Asha also heads
up Pacific Domes
which is doing
wonderful things around the (oblate
spheroidal) globe with Buckminster
Fuller's
geodesic invention.
I had the pleasure of building and living in a dome (a Cathedralite Dome kit from Aptos, California) in Georgetown, California in the late 1970's. In addition to just being a great space to be in, since we left quite a bit of our floor plan open, the acoustics were quite interesting, too! A neighbor (and long time mentor, Floyd Edwards who started the Creative Dynamics program (Leadership and Human Relations) my ex-wife and I enjoyed teaching in nearby adult schools for several years) had made a custom battery-operated clock with his airbrushed art, which hung on the wall downstairs next to the woodstove. At the time, we had a slant-board in the upstairs loft (looking up at the top 5 triangles of the dome) for meditation. One day, I realized the loud "tick-tick" I kept hearing was the minuscule sound of this little clock bouncing around the interior surface of the 39' diameter dome... and converging back at a point where my head was... amazingly, one could barely hear the clock standing next to it!
Another fond memory of the dome was the day our generous friends and neighbors spent most of a day helping us raise the 60 plywood-over-beveled-2x4-triangles into place. After hoisting 5 pentagons (all made of triangles) atop a 5' riser wall, then linking them together with 5 hexagons (also made of similar trianges) so we could now remove the supports and (after raising the scaffolding to get to the 21' peak), we finally put the last top 5 triangles of the dome into place. The second to the last triangle was fitted with a sturdy eye bolt, through which a long rope was tied. I got to hop up onto the now-sturdy roof with a sledge hammer and sequentially tap the 3 corners until the last triangle fit perfectly snug and the whole structure (just like Bucky professed) went from a loose wobbly thing to rock 'solid' (not accounting for the vast emptiness of quantum space, of course!
To help visualize this 3/8 sphere
dome, check out Poly from Pedagoguery
Software.
and animate the 3-Frequency Icosahedral Geodesic
Sphere (and imagine 5 pentagons (defaulting to red
color) resting on a 'cylinder'. Here's a "bird's
eye view" of the dome we built and lived in, using
a screen snap from Poly with appropriate triangles
grayed out and more dome
resources.
I had the pleasure of building and living in a dome (a Cathedralite Dome kit from Aptos, California) in Georgetown, California in the late 1970's. In addition to just being a great space to be in, since we left quite a bit of our floor plan open, the acoustics were quite interesting, too! A neighbor (and long time mentor, Floyd Edwards who started the Creative Dynamics program (Leadership and Human Relations) my ex-wife and I enjoyed teaching in nearby adult schools for several years) had made a custom battery-operated clock with his airbrushed art, which hung on the wall downstairs next to the woodstove. At the time, we had a slant-board in the upstairs loft (looking up at the top 5 triangles of the dome) for meditation. One day, I realized the loud "tick-tick" I kept hearing was the minuscule sound of this little clock bouncing around the interior surface of the 39' diameter dome... and converging back at a point where my head was... amazingly, one could barely hear the clock standing next to it!
Another fond memory of the dome was the day our generous friends and neighbors spent most of a day helping us raise the 60 plywood-over-beveled-2x4-triangles into place. After hoisting 5 pentagons (all made of triangles) atop a 5' riser wall, then linking them together with 5 hexagons (also made of similar trianges) so we could now remove the supports and (after raising the scaffolding to get to the 21' peak), we finally put the last top 5 triangles of the dome into place. The second to the last triangle was fitted with a sturdy eye bolt, through which a long rope was tied. I got to hop up onto the now-sturdy roof with a sledge hammer and sequentially tap the 3 corners until the last triangle fit perfectly snug and the whole structure (just like Bucky professed) went from a loose wobbly thing to rock 'solid' (not accounting for the vast emptiness of quantum space, of course!
To help visualize this 3/8 sphere
dome, check out Poly from Pedagoguery
Software.
and animate the 3-Frequency Icosahedral Geodesic
Sphere (and imagine 5 pentagons (defaulting to red
color) resting on a 'cylinder'. Here's a "bird's
eye view" of the dome we built and lived in, using
a screen snap from Poly with appropriate triangles
grayed out and more dome
resources.
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