Capstone project : Zometool : from 0 to the 4th dimension
Capstone Project (B.A.) Liberal Studies Department
Abstract
Abstract: My capstone project was the development of a geometric construction workshop at Mckinnon Elementary School in Salinas using Zometool, a manipulative whose components are based on the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio . By building the Platonic Solids like the cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron as well as the Archimedean solids such as the truncated cube and truncated octahedron. the students were able to begin to think componentially and see that an individual solid shape may be broken down into several smaller components with attributes of their own.Besides learning to think in two and three dimensions, this workshop also introduced my students to 4 dimensional thinking by building such structures as the hypercube (8 cubes) and the hyperdodecahedron (120 dodecahedrons) which were three dimensional projections of four dimensional objects. I have generated enough interest in this workshop that I will be continuing what I have started for the rest of this year and hopefully for many years to come.
