Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Tensegrity Structure Robots: Day 1 - They're not really robots, huh...

Tensegrity Structures?  Robots?  Icosahedrons?

Ok, let me break it down for you.  First of all, you're right.  They're not really robots.  That was just kind of my cheap attempt to get you in the door.

They ARE tensegrity structures.  Tensegrity structures?  Tensional integrity a.k.a. floating compression is an architectural term that describes a structure that stays together by having each piece push or pull on another piece.

Icosahedrons are a type of polyhedron that has 20 sides.

So today we made a tensegrity structure that has 20 sides.  Next time, we're going to try hooking up a motor and adding some motion in hopes of being able to call these robots... even though that's a bit of stretch, it'll still be cool.






8 comments:

Anonymous said...

i was not very good at it but he helped me

Armando said...

Today was awesome! I finished everything that we needed to do. I cant wait until I get to finish!

Kenton said...

Today we made cool tensegrity straw structures.

Magnus said...

This was a great class. I have never done it before. I would love to do it again! :-)

Rana said...

Today was a really cool and fun class! I loved the idea of creating a geometric figure out of straws and rubber bands. I needed help because I was confused. So Ahren showed me how to do it. I saw other people's figures, and theirs were really cool and abstract. I really loved today's class. Can't wait till Thursday to do cool things with mine! :):)

Bara said...

Today, I cut straws, that where about 3 inches.
I then used rubber bands to make a 20 faced shape with it.
While trying to make this polygon, it snapped.
In the end I tried it one more time, and i succeeded in making theyyyy 20 faced shape.

ramon said...

it was fun but it was so hard .

jochelle said...

this activity was kind of hard but it was also fun. mine went broken.