fbpx

Archimedes’ Earring

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea whether Archimedes wore earrings. However, I couldn’t help but think of him when I saw the posts on Kumiko’s earrings:

If you look closely, you will see that the post is a cuboctahedron, which is one of the Archimedean solids. A cuboctahedron is roughly what you get if a cube and an octahedron get married. It has the features both of a cube (6 square faces) and a regular octahedron (8 equilateral triangular faces). The cuboctahedron is called an Archimedean solid because it was first discoved by Archimedes in Ancient Greece over 2000 years ago. It was then re-discovered during the Renaissance. Here is a beautiful drawing of the cuboctahedron by Leonardo Da Vinci from around 1500:

 

Leonardo_da_Vinci_cuboctahedron

And here is an cuboctahedron made with Geometiles:

cubeoctahedron

Would Archimedes (or any other mathematician) ever have imagined this shape being used as an earring POST?

SaveSave

SaveSave

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *