A regular dodecahedron has faces which are regular pentagons. Looking around for a good method to construct pentagons by paper folding I came across one which seemed nice. Unfortunately, the method is not exact (as often purported to be) but only approximate. The approximation is good, but, if on top of the mathematical error one adds the physical one, the resulting pentagon is often visibly non-canonical.
The approximate method can be described as follows:
Start with a square. Let A, B be the middle points of two adjacent sides and C the vertex farthest away from these two points. Let M be the middle of the segment BC. Consider the shaded rectangle whose diagonal is MC and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise so C goes to C1. Pick the point K so that KC1:KM = 1:3. The "pentagon" has vertices A, B, C, K and the symmetric of K.
To see that it's not a regular pentagon, let the side of the original square have length 8u where u is the square root of 2 (for no good reason other than that I wanted to end up with integers). Then, using the Pythagorean theorem several times, we can see that AB equals sqrt(256)=16, but BK equals sqrt(250) which equals 15.81... (Pretty good approximation.) Notice that MK passes through the middle of BC and is perpendicular to it, so BK equals CK. By symmetry, 4 of the 5 sides of the pentagon have length 15.81... and only one has length 16.
Does anyone know an exact (and simple...) origami method for constructing regular pentagons?
20 May 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
T H E B O T T O M L I N E
What measure theory is about
It's about counting, but when things get too large.
Put otherwise, it's about addition of positive numbers, but when these numbers are far too many.
Put otherwise, it's about addition of positive numbers, but when these numbers are far too many.
The principle of dynamic programming
max_{x,y} [f(x) + g(x,y)] = max_x [f(x) + max_y g(x,y)]
The bottom line
Nuestras horas son minutos cuando esperamos saber y siglos cuando sabemos lo que se puede aprender.
(Our hours are minutes when we wait to learn and centuries when we know what is to be learnt.) --António Machado
Αγεωμέτρητος μηδείς εισίτω.
(Those who do not know geometry may not enter.) --Plato
Sapere Aude! Habe Muth, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!
(Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason!) --Kant
(Our hours are minutes when we wait to learn and centuries when we know what is to be learnt.) --António Machado
Αγεωμέτρητος μηδείς εισίτω.
(Those who do not know geometry may not enter.) --Plato
Sapere Aude! Habe Muth, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!
(Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason!) --Kant
http://origami.oschene.com/cp/Decagon%20SCP.pdf
ReplyDeleteI saw this on a calendar last year, I lost it for a while and found it again on the net. It works!