Rona Gurkewitz and Bennett Arnstein
Bennett and I experimented with Gyroscoping different regular
polyhedra. We were motivated to find new forms
and new origami models in a system or family of related polyhedra. The
family was built on a common algorithm
and functionality of modules with different regular polygon starting
shapes. Gyroscoping a regular polyhedron
involves putting a module with a point on each face and having the
bases of the modules connect without glue.
The gyroscoped model is an example of an unusual model in modular
origami. It is made up of three different
modules. Our third book has instructions for making these models and
others. "Multimodular Origami Polyhedra: Archimedeans, Buckyballs and
Duality", Dover Publications, 2003.
The egg is a truncated hexadecahedron with a square face at both
ends, eight pentagonal faces and sixteen hexagonal faces. The
Gyroscoped Egg has each face of the Egg replaced by a vertex and
thus the mountain
fold edges of the Gyroscoped Egg form a dual polyhedron to the
Egg. These models are interesting because they are elliptical
rather than spherical. The dual model in the mountain folds of the
Gyroscoped Egg's pentagonal and hexagonal facxes form interesting
five pointed and six pointed stars The Egg is not a Johnson solid
so it is a near miss to a regular polyhedron. We were inspired to
create the Gyroscoped Egg by experimenting with Gyroscoping and
just wanting to discover what it looked like.