Symmetry @ Otterbein

The image represents a molecule of chloropentacarbonylmanganese or ClMn(CO)₅. For the last half-hour or so, I have been playing around in the Symmetry Gallery put together by Otterbein. Lots of lovely molecules with high degrees of symmetry. It is remarkable (to me) that such things even exist in nature. I encourage you to go and check out the lovely interactive demos on the site.

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Three-Dimensional Kaleidoscope

My highschool student, Lukas Boelling, made this three-dimensional icosahedral/dodecahedral kaleidoscope with his dad, @eric_boelling. Lukas based his models off this excellent paper: Alice through Looking Glass after Looking Glass: The Mathematics of Mirrors and Kaleidoscopes by Roe Goodman. Stay tuned for more models!

Malin Christersson’s Cube Toy

I was looking through the Geogebra site and found this lovely applet Orthographic Projection by Malin Christersson.

This is a lovely tool for investigating one of my favourite facts about hexagons:

The area maximizing orthogonal projection of a cube is the regular hexagon.

It turns out that Malin has tonnes of awesome geometry stuff online!

• Hyperbolic tiler!
• Pythagora’s Tree!
• A whole Tumblr full of great animations!

Awesome math art!