Eight Golden Rectangles

Posted on 25 April 2021 by RobertLovesPi

This Euclidean construction was made using Geometer’s Sketchpad, and colored using that program, as well as MS-Paint.

A Euclidean Construction of the Golden Rectangle

Posted on 18 April 2021 by RobertLovesPi

Start with points A and B. Construct a circle, centered on A, with radius AB. Draw line AB, which intersects this circle at B and C. Construct a second line which is perpendicular to the first line, intersecting it at A. Let the two intersections of the circle and this second be named points D and E.

Bisect segment AB, and call its midpoint F. Construct a line containing D and F. If the circle’s radius is two, then AF = FB = 1, while AD = 2. By the Pythagorean Theorem applied to right triangle DAF, then, DF = sqrt(5). Construct a second circle centered on F, with radius DF. Construct point G where this circle intersects segment AC. It follows that FG, being another radius of this second circle, has a length of sqrt(5). This makes BG = FB + FG = 1 + sqrt(5).

Construct the line which is perpendicular to line AE and passes through point E. Next, construct the two lines perpendicular to line AB and passing through points G and B. These two lines intersect the first line described in this paragraph at two points: H (below G) and I (below B). ABIE is a square with edge length two, and both GBIH and AEHG are golden rectangles.

Building a Rhombic Enneacontahedron, Using Icosahedra and Elongated Octahedra

Posted on 5 November 2015 by RobertLovesPi

With four icosahedra, and four octahedra, it is possible to attach them to form this figure:

This figure is actually a rhombus, but the gap between the two central icosahedra is so small that this is hard to see. To remedy this problem, I elongated the octahedra, thereby creating this narrow rhombus:

It is also possible to use the same collection of polyhedra to make a wider rhombus, as seen below.

These aren’t just any rhombi, either, but the exact rhombi found in the polyhedron below, the rhombic enneacontahedron. It has ninety rhombi as faces: sixty wide ones, and thirty narrow ones.

As a result, it is possible to use the icosahedra-and-elongated-octahedra rhombi, above, to construct a rhombic enneacontahedron made of these other two polyhedra. The next several images show it under construction (I “built” it using Stella 4d, available at this website), culminating with the complete figure.