Friday, February 8, 2008

my arm hurts


my first two small cardboard spheres... hard-won little cardboard worlds that they are...

I have now two small planetariums mostly finished, after much, much, much cutting of cardboard circles, and the makings of a third planetarium, which will be double in size.

As sore as my arm currently is, I must say there is no substitute for hard labour to familiarize oneself with the particulars of creation. I could now make 2v geodesic domes (that's the name of the particular geodesic structures I've been making) in my sleep, with my sore hand tied behind my back. Which is just as well, cause until you get your head around the construction of geodesic structures, they're really confusing.

Thank crikey for a couple of essential online resources - particularly this fab 'how to make a cardboard dome for your classroom' page, and this excellent dome calculator, which helped me get all the lengths right.

Next innings, it's all about mapping accurate starmaps onto the domes. Which will be sweet confusion all over again, but at least i dont have to cut out anymore cardboard circles.

4 comments:

Radagast said...

Hope that all works well.

You're going to make holes in the cardboard, is that right?

So you need to convert a map like this http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yoursky?z=1&lat=33.8833&ns=South&lon=151.217&ew=East to triangles?

That sounds tricky to do accurately, especially with the 2 different trangle sizes. If I had to do it, I guess I'd write a little computer program...

I'd love to see the result when it's done.

Tanya said...

Hey Kirsten,

Nice to finally meet you at Bjork. I have just been doing some trawling and wondered if you had come across this japanese laser cut cardboard business...

http://www.wtv.co.jp/com/index.html

tjoyy said...

Hello there
Hope you don't mind I have put your blog up on my blog under my inspiration list!

Katie Alleva said...

Hi,
I too find what you do and make inspiring! Thank You for helping me get started with my blog.....I am on a roll now and quite addicted. You are on my 'Things I like list.' Goodluck!