About RobertLovesPi

I go by RobertLovesPi on-line, and am interested in many things, a large portion of which are geometrical. Welcome to my own little slice of the Internet. The viewpoints and opinions expressed on this website are my own. They should not be confused with those of my employer, nor any other organization, nor institution, of any kind.

On Watching the Stock Market

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Expanding the Icosidodecahedron

Posted on 19 July 2019 by RobertLovesPi

This is the icosidodecahedron. It’s one of the thirteen Archimedean solids. To make an expanded version of it, I first augmented each of its faces with a prism.

Next, I formed the augmented icosidodecahedron’s convex hull.

This expanded icosidodecahedron has the twelve pentagonal faces (shown in red) and twenty triangular faces (shown in blue) of the original icosidodechedron. It also has sixty rectangular faces (yellow), and sixty isosceles triangles (shown in green). That’s a total of 152 faces.

To do all of this, I used a program called Stella 4d. If you’d like to try Stella for yourself, for free, just visit this website: http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

A Golden Tessellation of Quadrilaterals

Posted on 10 July 2019 by RobertLovesPi

In this tessellation, golden rectangles are shown in yellow. The orange darts are each made of two golden gnomons, joined at a leg — while the blue rhombi are each made of two golden triangles, sharing a base.

A Rhombic Triacontahedron, Decorated with Geometric Artwork

Posted on 8 July 2019 by RobertLovesPi

To make this rotating .gif, I navigated to the rhombic triacontahedron in Stella 4d, and then loaded images onto its thirty faces, with the image being the one I blogged in the post right before this one. This program, Stella, has a free trial download you can get right here.

A Geometrical Exploration of the Number Fourteen

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Yellowstone Bison Stops Traffic

Posted on 2 July 2019 by RobertLovesPi

The wildlife in Yellowstone National Park live there; the people are merely visitors. I stopped our car when I saw a bison (what some call buffalo) grazing by the side of the road; I wanted a good picture.

I certainly did not expect what happened next — the bison decided to calmly strut into traffic! He stayed there a while, too. In Yellowstone, the wildlife have the right-of-way.

The 15th Stellation of the Compound of a Dodecahedron and an Icosahedron

Posted on 26 June 2019 by RobertLovesPi

I made this using Stella 4d, which you can try for free at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

I’m Walking on an Active Volcano at Yellowstone National Park

Posted on 23 June 2019 by RobertLovesPi

At the time my wife took this picture, I did not yet realize that we were walking around on an active volcano when we recently visited Yellowstone National Park. The outgassing behind me, which I had just walked through, should have clued me in, since it had a strong smell of hydrogen sulfide mixed with hydrochloric and sulfuric acids. At a gift shop, I found a book by Greg Briening called Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park. It explains the science of Yellowstone, and makes a strong case that the volcano that created Yellowstone will blow up again, possibly soon, with cataclysmic consequences worldwide.

Pictures of Delicate Arch, from Arches National Park

Posted on 21 June 2019 by RobertLovesPi

These pictures all include Delicate Arch, which I once painted, before first seeing it for real a few days ago. It’s the sandstone formation on the left.

We visited Arches N.P., in Utah, on our way to Yellowstone National Park. More vacation pictures are coming soon.

Places I Have Been, #3 (Updated for Yellowstone Trip)

Posted on 19 June 2019 by RobertLovesPi

My wife Dee and I live in Arkansas, the state shown in yellow above. This map shows, in pink, states we have visited together, between 2013 and the present. I just updated it for our vacation to Yellowstone National Park, which roughly doubled the pink area. States and provinces shown in blue are ones I have visited, but not with Dee, all before 2013. It is my ambition to visit other continents as well — it just hasn’t happened yet.

We took pictures on our trip, and they’ll show up here soon. First, though, I need sleep, for that was quite a long drive!