This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Popularised by inventor Buckminster Fuller, geodesic domes are half-sphericalstructures made using a series of geometric linkages.
Spaceship Earth at Disney's Epcot theme park in Florida is probably the best-known example, but thousands of structures -- not to mention playground climbing frames -- use this method. If you want to make your own version on a budget, biochemist Simon Quellen Field can help.
Prepare your materials Unlike large-scale structural geodesic domes, this smaller model can be made using a network of 255 drinking straws. You need to cut them into three different lengths:
90 straws at 197mm long; 85 at 191mm long; and 80 at 165mm long. You'll also need 76 small brad nails and a punch or knife to make two parallel holes 6mm from both ends of every straw.
Form a central pentagon The central pentagon will be the apex of your geodesic dome. Attach five 165mm straws together using a brad inserted through the pre-pierced hole. This will form a sort of five-spoked wheel shape around the central brad. Attach one 191mm straw across each leg to the next, resulting in a pentagon with five straw segments inside it. Note that the pentagon will not be flat.
Form the outer hexagons Using the 197mm straws, assemble five six-spoked straw hexagon wheels. Attach one side of the wheel to an outside node of the pentagon, then attach the closest leg of the six-sided wheel to the pentagon's next closest leg. Repeat this for each pentagon node. Now link each of the wheels with medium straws.
Adjacent hexagons will share a medium straw and a node.
Pull it all together To finish the semi-dome, link three small straws together, then connect the three sides to the connected pentagons in order to fill in the lower gaps. You should have a dome that stands at about 70cm high. If you want a bigger one you can always scale the straws up, suggests Quellen Field. "If you want a dome twice as big, you just double the straw lengths," he says.
Explore further Small domes are fun to make, but this kind of structure can be scaled to incredible dimensions. You may not want to build a geodesic house, but PVC pipe or conduit can work nicely for something of an intermediate size. Quellen Field used this kind of structure for an enclosure for chickens and small parrots, covering it with aviary wire and tarpaulin to keep them contained.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
