“Hey, this is interesting! Here’s an article about a sculpture installation that keeps track of the date. We can take a trip out to the desert tomorrow and view it from the road.”
“Ah Mom, I don’t want to go anywhere tomorrow. Besides I can see what date it is on the wall calendar or in the newspaper.”
“Look this is in the Culture category and you need to cultivate that side of you. These are giant glass forms that flip themselves to show the weekday, month and day of the month. For weekdays it’s a seven-sided body…”
“You mean a pentagonal prism?”
“Right, you sure know your geometry. And for the month, there’s a 12-sided…”
“Dodecahedron, and there’s probably some 31-sided polyhedron for the day?”
“No, there are two…for 0-3 a tetrahedron and for 0-9 a…”
“A pentagonal deltohedron. Wow, but how do they move?”
“It says there’re like greenhouses, each absorbs heat from the morning sun that works directly on Nitinol levers to flip them one or two times to angle the correct face forward.”
“That would be like massive ‘muscle wires’, awesome!”
“The polyhedra are completely autonomous, though there’s a computer inside each one.”
“I knew there was a catch.”
“It’s just to tell each block how to turn and to avoid a collision.”
“Cool, let’s get up really early so we can see when they move.”
-- FarmerJohn, Oct 09 2003

sketch http://www.geocitie...nnie/polyhedra.html
[FarmerJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

All Uniform Polyhedra http://www.mathcons...m/unipoly/list.html
[FarmerJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Geometric Sculpture of George W. Hart http://www.georgeha...ture/sculpture.html
[FarmerJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Muscle Wires frequently asked questions http://www.robotsto...cle_Wire_FAQ_V3.pdf
pdf file [FarmerJohn, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

(?) 7 sided D7 dice! http://dozensofgames.com/7sideddice.html
[Amos Kito, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

May I be the first to offer you a pastry salute.

I can just see roleplayers of my acquaintance wanting a set of giant dice designed to flip randomly.
-- madradish, Oct 09 2003


I thought this was going to be a love triangle gone horribly wrong..
-- yamahito, Oct 09 2003


or love triage even.

own up FJ, this is a clock. right?
-- po, Oct 09 2003


Well, gosh, sorta...kinda...
-- FarmerJohn, Oct 09 2003


"Then, in the year 2035, the polyhedrae finally rolled into the Atlantic, unable to avoid their own destruction."
-- phoenix, Oct 09 2003


Too bad about that 7-sided day shape. Maybe it should be an octahedron, but with one duplicated side (it could be useful as a "pivot" side, to prevent it from ever having to roll more than once to increment the day.)
-- phundug, Oct 09 2003


I nominate George Hart for the best use of AOL CD's to date.
-- RayfordSteele, Oct 09 2003



random, halfbakery