Polyhedra Play Things

This morning at the Battlefields of Northern Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics (BNVCTM) spring conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Art Stoner of A+ Compass. Art was wearing a t-shirt with the following joke:

ALGEBRA: It’s only fun till someone loses an i.

Art introduced me to Magformers, winner of the 2007 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award. Magformers are plastic polygons with small magnets along the middle of each edge, which can be used to make Archimedean solids, Johnson solids, houses, tanks, stars, and various other polyhedra.

I bought a set of 18 squares and 20 triangles. If my sons like them, I’ll buy more. (I know, I know… who am I kidding? Whether I buy more depends mostly on whether I like them.)

Talking about geometric objects reminds me of two geometry jokes…

• Without geometry, life would be pointless.
• Think outside the tesseract.