My
30-Strut Soda Straw Tensegrity Sphere
In my search
for other handmade tensegrity spheres and structures around the web,
I had the great fortune to surf across George Hart's site. George has
a wonderful page describing an incredibly simple and inexpensive way
that anyone can start building tensegrity structures using only soda
straws, paper clips, and rubber bands. I was so intrigued, I just had
to build one for myself! I went to the local drugstore to pick up the
few materials needed, and when there decided that I'd substitute miniature
colored hairbands for the rubber bands described on George's page. I
figured that they would last a bit longer than rubber bands and would
also lend some color coding to the patternsin the sphere. I also thought
I'd also experiment with making the struts shorter, 2.5" in length,
in order to create a more compact sphere
My result was a 3.5" diameter 30-Strut sphere. It's a bit different
from the one George shows on his page, and because of the shortness
of the straws I used relative to the length of the hairbands, it's not
as "bouncy" as George's probably is.
It is, however, a nice little sphere to sit on my monitor. I purposely
used five colors - black, yellow, blue, white, and red - and distributed
them in an even pattern throughout the sphere. the colored bands, the
shiny silver paper clips, and the mostly white straws make for a very
pleasing little sphere.
Build your very own tensegrity structure! See George
Hart's amazingly cool Soda
Straw Tensegrity Structures Page.
email Jim Leftwich
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