Cuboctahedron---Projective Plane Transformer
Materials and Methods: Sewn Fabric, Zippers, and Velcro
Designer & Artist: S. Louise Gould
This interactive three-dimensional piece consists of a cuboctahdron that can be unzipped into two congruent halves. The exterior of the cuboctahedron is blue and the interior red. One of these halves can be folded in such a way that three of the square faces intersect each other in the center of a faceted octahedron. Opposite edges of the half "sphere" are twisted and zipped together forming a model of the projective plane shown on this model as blue meets red. Clues to the folding are marked as valley (blue and green stripes) and mountain folds (red and green stripes) on the red side and the color of the zippers. The inspiration and mathematical motivation is to better understand the projective plane by examining this particularly symmetric polyhedral model.