I first discovered Zometool at the Education Expo of Colorado when I was 13 years old. Being a 13 year old boy, I was quite interested in anything I could build with, be it Lego, Construx, K'NEX, or sticks and glue. When I walked past the Zometool booth and saw a towering archway made of plastic sticks and funny little balls, I stopped to take a look and to play with the pieces that were sitting out. Soon one of the workers there explained to me a little bit of the math behind Zometool, and from that moment on I was hooked. Being able to easily and precisely create geometric shapes ranging from golden rectangles to polyhedra to hypercubes was absolutely fascinating to me. I spent virtually the entire weekend sitting in the Zometool booth, building spaceships and towers and dodecahedra and anything else the workers there wanted me to build. A Denver Post photographer who was covering the show came and took a few pictures of me, including the one shown below (Denver Post, roughly April 1994, front page) I left the show with a "hypercube kit", and from time to time would use it to demonstrate the concept of four-dimensional shapes to classmates or friends.
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I enjoy the mathematical aspects of Zometool a great deal, but you'll often find me sitting on the living room floor with one or two of my five younger siblings, building a tower or a rocket ship or a tunnel for their toy cars. This has to be the only thing I've ever found that is both interesting from a theoretical standpoint *and* so fun that my little brother and sisters all want to play with it. I'll probably end up getting each of them a set for Christmas so I'll be able to use my own set without having to fight anyone for parts. :)
Charles T. Darrow, now...
I'm now a math major at the Colorado School of Mines, and I've nearly completed my degree. I find I'm becoming more and more fascinated by the mathematical aspects of Zometool. Just this past summer (about 8 years after my first encounter with Zometool) I was looking for origami paper at the mall and happened upon some Zometool. I started excitedly explaining to Catherine (my fiance, who is working on her masters degree in math) what Zometool are and why I like them. Another customer heard me talking and decided to buy a set for her 13-year-old son! I decided that I, too, would buy a larger set to go with my old Hypercube kit. Catherine and I spent the rest of the afternoon building towers, fractal cubes, spaceships, icosahedra inscribed in dodecahedra, etc. and analyzing the mathematical properties of some of the shapes we created. She took the picture of me shown below, which reminded me an awful lot of the picture from 8 years before (both my hair and my facial expression are the same!) I contacted the Zometool headquarters and was able to get a copy of the original picture to go with my new picture.
