How to make a dodecahedron with your own hands?

The dodecahedron is a very unusual three-dimensional figure, consisting of 12 identical faces, each of which represents a regular pentagon. To assemble the dodecahedron with your own hands, it is not at all necessary to have special 3D modeling skills , even a child will cope with this task. A little knack, and you will surely succeed!

Necessary materials and tools

• A sheet of white and colored paper. The optimal density is 220 g / m ² . Very thin paper wrinkles too much during assembly, and very thick cardboard breaks in folds.
• Dodecahedron scan (template).
• Thin clerical knife or very sharp scissors.
• A simple pencil or marker.
• Protractor.
• Long ruler.
• Liquid glue.
• Brush

Instruction manual

1. If you have a printer, you can print the template immediately on a sheet, but you can draw it yourself. Pentagons are constructed using a protractor and a ruler, the angle between adjacent lines should be exactly 108 °, choosing the length of the face, you can make a large or small dodecahedron. The scan represents 2 connected "flowers", consisting of 6 figures. Be sure to leave small allowances, they are needed for bonding.
2. Carefully cut the workpiece with scissors or a knife on a special rubber mat so as not to damage the surface of the table. Next, go to the places of the bends with the sharp corner of the ruler, this will significantly facilitate the assembly of the figure and make the edges more accurate.
3. Using a brush, apply a little glue to the allowances and assemble the figure by bending the edges inward. If you decide to make the dodecahedron with your own hands, and there wasn’t even any tape at hand, cut out the allowances of one half of the template in the form of elongated triangles, and make small cuts on the folds of the second part. Then just insert the edges into the grooves and the structure will hold fairly firmly.

The finished figure can be painted or decorated with stickers. A large model can be turned into an original calendar, because the number of sides corresponds to the number of months in a year. If you are fond of Japanese applied art, you can make a dodecahedron with your own hands using the modular origami technique.

1. Prepare 30 sheets of plain office paper. Well, if they are color and two-sided, you can choose several shades.
2. The manufacture of modules. Mentally draw a sheet into four identical strips and fold it with an accordion. Bend the corners in one direction in opposite directions, the resulting figure should resemble a parallelogram. It remains to bend the workpiece on a short diagonal. Make 30 modules and proceed with the assembly.
3. The dodecahedron has 10 nodes, each assembled from three elements. Prepare all the parts and put them into each other. To prevent the modules from moving apart, fix the joints with paper clips, when you fully assemble the figure, they can be removed.

Once you master the technique you like, you can teach yourself how to build the dodecahedron with your own hands of your child or friend. Indeed, the manufacture of three-dimensional figures not only develops the motility of the fingers well, but also forms a spatial imagination.