gee, I waste time...

[miriam_e]

Stayed up late last night making a funny little tensegrity octahedron out of sticks, pins stuck into their ends, shirt buttons on the pins, and elastic threat looped through the buttons. It is cute, but took me much longer than I thought it would. I originally made one out of just sticks with rubber bands looped over them, but the other day one of rubber bands finally died and it popped apart. Took me a while to find suitable replacement materials, fossicking thru all my junk. Yeah, as well as wasting time I also accumulate junk.

The little guy is about a foot (30cm) tall.

OK. Just took a better pic with my camera instead of crappy webcam. Here it is.

Just realised I didn't mention why I made the damn thing.

Tensegrity is a fascinating concept: shapes formed by the balance between tension and compression. It seems to be what gives our body's cells shape, and probably accounts for the way proteins fold up too. I love that in that cute little octahedron the 3 sticks are not securely fixed -- they are just sitting there, under tension. You can squash the shape and it pops back. Imagine if we built our homes this way... or our cars. How cool would that be?