Normally my posts are a bit more conclusive than this one, but I fancied logging it (blogging).
I’ve got an idea for a project involving lots of little neodynium magnets. They’re pretty cool and I’ve been wanting for some ideas involving them to pop into my head for ages and now I’ve got a couple. I’m not going to give it all away until it’s done but they involve spheres covered in magnets. I’m testing it out with ping pong balls.
The magnet’s aren’t that expensove but they aren’t free. I payed £4 for 25 so I can’t reall afford to just cover the whole ball with them side by side. I first tried covering them by putting a magnet at each pole of the 3 axes, then putting another magnet in the triangular space created. This is OK but it isn’t that even and is hard to add more to. So I went for a geodesic pattern
I found it’s real easy to cover a sphere in a geodesic pattern with a compass. Set the compass radius gap to 0.31 times the diameter of the sphere, this should give a circle surrounded by 5 similar circles all the way round. It’s pretty satisfying doing it I reckon.
I’ve now got to make the rest!