¶ Precession of Two Sets of 10 Closest-packed Spheres (1)
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Precession of Two Sets of 10 Closest-packed Spheres:
"I’m sure a number of you have been with me at previous lectures and you may have seen these / two sets of 10 closest-packed spheres–see sec. 260.50 (Gray) _, but the majority of you, I am sure, still have not been with me all this time. I know that four years ago I was asked to speak at a congress of mathematics teachers in Oregon and there were 2000 mathematicians there and I asked them if any of them were familiar with the se objects. And they said ‘No.’ And I said would any of them be willing to come up on the stage with me and put them together in a way that we would all agree is the way. There is a the way.
“So one of them came up and he looked them over, and he saw these two quadrangles and he tried matching those… then he saw two triangles and he tried matching those… then he saw these–what we call trapezoids–and he tried matching those. So then he tried to put them together like that, and that didn’t seem to be too impressive either. Then he tried what we might call like a raft and that wasn’t too good either. So he started all over again and I saw he wasn’t getting anywhere, so I said I’m going to have to show you how to do it.”
