Product Description
This hollow sphere, like a sunflower, is composed of 1,029 identical truncated hexagonal prism 'seeds' which partially overlap. It was created by taking a simple planar spiral of the prism 'seeds', then rotating, tilting, and translating each seed to its appropriate place on a hemisphere. Then the hemisphere is copied and rotated around the center of seed 520 to form a complete sphere. The planar spiral equation is a polar equation where each seed's center is located at a distance r and angle A from the origin, where r= .01 Sqrt[t] for each t, 1 to 520, and A= 2 t Pi/(Phi ^2), where Phi is the Golden Ratio, 1.618. So each seed in the planar spiral is rotated 137.5 degrees ( the "Golden Angle") from the previous one, and is a bit further out from the center. There is a nice photo of a Chamomile flower with a similar arrangement which is visible if you click on the 'white strong and flexible' material option. It shows the arrangement of the outer seed spirals as 21 blue spirals and 13 aqua spirals, consecutive Fibonacci numbers. The hole made by leaving 9 'seeds' out at the equator allows the printing powder to be removed.