Monday, July 8, 2013

Sliceforms are my new obsession



                               
I love sliceforms.  What are they you say?  Well, they are exactly what the term says...slices of a form.  For example, I decided to make a sliceform of a sphere.  I used my designing software with the Cameo Silhouette and created this sphere. I used the Pythagorean theorem to determine the size of each of the circles.  The largest circle is four inches and the slices are .5 inches apart.  The smaller circles were then calculated to be 3.873 in., 3.464 in. and 2.646 in. I have included the PDF and .Studio files if you would like to make sliceforms at the end of this post. They would look great as a decoration for a party or as an ornament. The shapes took me hours to make so please pass them along and appreciate what math can do!

 Marley loves it too! Amazing that it lies flat when put together.

Sliceform Sphere

I saw a sliceform of a torus on the internet.  I made it and then decided it was not pretty enough so I created my own version. The pink torus is the scalloped version and the blue torus is the zigzag version. This time the toruses makes me think of flowers instead of food (a donut).  I love the way the variations of color are created by the shadows of the slices and the spiral in the center.  There is so much going on mathematically as well as artistically.  It makes me so happy!


Sliceform Torus

For the mathematical people there are villarceau circles which create this shape.  Here is an explanation from Wolfram Alpha.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VillarceauCircles.html


The cube sliceform makes me think of the dividers in a box for glassware so that the glasses do not touch one another.  They have practical applications. Sliceforms are amazing!

Sliceform Cube
Here is the PDF of the sliceforms.

 
Here is the .Studio file.  I used cardstock to create my models.



6 comments:

  1. Hi Elaine. I am a teacher who'd love to try out your paper crafts with my math students. Do you have any files compatible with the Cricut Maker? And are you on Twitter? I'd love to follow you for more ideas.

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  2. Julia, My files are not compatible with the Circuit. In order to make them compatible, convert the PDF to SVG. Instructions on how to do this are on the Internet. I am on Twitter but the best place to follow me is here on my blog. If you have any further questions of comments, please email me directly at surferwolf@aol.com

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  3. I printed the patterns....
    thankyou!!!
    For Bi-color, how many of each color?

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  4. Very cool! Thanks so much for sharing! I hope I can introduce these to my classes. I’m sure they will find them fascinating! ❤️

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