Equilateral Triangle Unit 1-A: Snub Dodecahedron (150 Units) by FUSE Tomoko. From Rittai mangekyou (Solid Figure Kaleidoscope).

 From 150 units. Folded from 1x4 rectangles cut from 6.9cm squares.

I think this model is so cool:-) I love the unit because it's made from 1x4 rectangles, so you don't have to use as much paper, and because it's quick to fold (I timed myself somewhere in between, and it took me about 25 seconds to fold one unit - and I'm not a very fast folder).

Still, 150 units are more than a little intimidating (I don't remember ever making a modular with more than 30 units...), so I decided to make this model on a train trip across the country (Germany, that is, so it wasn't THAT far compared to, say, the US;-) ). I had a job interview, and I was on the road almost 16 hours in one day. I had a great connection, so I was actually kinda looking forward to the trip - lots of folding time on an air-conditioned train. Yup, sure was lots of folding time, but NO air conditioning!!! On my way there, the air conditioning was broken in the car with my reserved seat, but it didn't get overly hot, and since all the noisy people went to a different car where air conditioning was working, leaving us quiet people in peace, I decided to stay in my seat. But after walking back to the train station from my interview, I was really hot already, so I was looking forward to the A.C., figuring that since I hadn't had any in the morning, surely it would be working now. Boy, was I wrong! By now, the A.C. was broken in THREE cars, among them the car where I'd reserved a seat, and all the other cars where overcrowded already... So I spent 4 1/2 hours in easily 40°C, with one free sort-of-cool bottle of water they gave us for the inconvenience... There were certain times where the sweat was literally pouring off my face, although I wasn't doing anything but sit there and fold... On the upside, I folded most of the modules and more-than-half completed the polyhedron:-) Gives a whole new meaning to wet-folding, too;-) Surprisingly little of the color came off the paper (standard Origami paper from Japan), though, in spite of the moisture on my hands.

I was planning on folding all Platonic and Archimedean Solids from the same unit but the unit doesn't work well for faces with more than five corners and vertices of degree 3 (although solids with triangular and square faces only seem to work okay even with vertices of degree 3)... . Here's the others I've folded so far: 60 unit Snub Cube, 60 unit Icosidodecahedron and 120 unit Lesser Rhombicosidodecahedron.

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 Last change to this page: 13-Jul-03 11:46