Activity 12 MAKING ORIGAMI BUCKYBALLS活动12做折纸巴克球.pdfVIP

Activity 12 MAKING ORIGAMI BUCKYBALLS For courses: geometry, graph theory Summary This activity has multiple parts. (a) Students learn the PHiZZ unit and use 30 units to make a dodecahedron with either a proper 3-edge-coloring or a symmetric 5-edge-coloring. (b) Students find a Hamilton circuit on the graph of the soccer ball (C60 Bucky- ball, truncated icosahedron) and use it to plan a proper 3-edge-coloring. Then, they (perhaps working in teams) make a 90-unit PHiZZ version. (c) Students use Euler’s formula and counting tricks to prove that every Bucky- ball has exactly 12 pentagons. A much bigger project is to classify all spheri- cal Buckyballs and develop a formula for the number of PHiZZ units needed to make them. Content In a graph theory course PHiZZ units can be a way to give students hands-on experience with 3-edge colorings. Hamilton circuits, edge colorings, Euler’s for- mula, and counting techniques are standard topics in undergraduate graph theory courses, and students are usually very eager to (either individually or by work- ing together) make large Buckyballs. Coxeter has a nice classification of spherical Buckyballs that does not seem to be very well-known, which offers a very nice way