The Geodesic Dome

Date: 4 Aug 1995 10:41:37 -0400
From: Jackie Scheibel
Subject: polygons

Question: My 7th grade class would like to know what polygons a geodesic
dome is made up of.  How many polygons and where are any located?

Thank you

Date: 4 Aug 1995 12:01:59 -0400
From: Dr. Ken
Subject: Re: polygons

Hello there!

Here's some information I found at the site
http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/bucky/buckminster_fuller.html   

He says that the Geodesic Dome (also called the Buckyball) is made up of 12
regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons.  Then you can put a point in the
middle of each of these faces, and divide the hexagons and pentagons up into
triangles.  That gives us a total of 6*20 + 5*12 = 180 triangular faces.
Note that the faces aren't all equilateral triangles.  

Anyway, if you really want to find out a lot about them, take a look at that
page.

-K