Slighty less scatalogical today
Geodesic
The word means the shortest line between 2 points, although is more usually used as a shorthand for the pattern created on a shape by a series of lines or panels.
The effect can be seen on the classic black and white 32 panel, 2 tone football which is made from a series of hexagons and pentagons arranged just so to create a sphere..... it is a work of genius.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MJS-Sports-LTD-Traditional-Football/dp/B07C7B8Y1T
Hippies were utterly enchanted by the work of renegade American architect Buckminster Fuller who mapped out the design for a dome made of a very lightweight but strong frame of sticks under tension that could cover huge areas in clear span, again by using pentagons and hexagons.... any survivor of the Albion Fairs might fondly remember the big dome they had as their main stage. Hippies and alternative folk galore have built their own interpretation of the frame utilising all sorts of materials from plastic water pipes, hedgerow sticks and aluminium tubing . The finished frame is usually draped in some dispiriting surplus tarpaulin that manages to make the resultant structure dark, slightly damp and somewhat depressing.
The esteemed designer Sir Barnes Wallis used a geodetic frame for his seminal Wellington bomber.... a skeleton of slender metal bars that gave the plane huge strength coupled with low unladen weight. It went on to be the most numerous British bomber of WW2.
Its successor, the Vickers Windsor, had an even lighter frame made of steel ribbon under tension, although the plane never got beyond prototype stage.
The shortest straight line on a curved or spherical surface also gives rise to the mind bending topic of spheroidal geometry.....maybe more of that on another day |  |
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