The Basics
Zometool is a unique 61-zone system that takes ball-and-stick construction to its highest level. Available in kits of various sizes, Zometool is a powerful design tool and educational toy for kids and hobbyists, students, teachers and researchers.
Precision-molded in ABS plastic, Zometool models spatial structures representing hyperspaces of up to 61 dimensions, geodesic space-frame structures, molecular models, including quasicrystals and Fullerenes.
The 61-Zone Structural System
A surprisingly rich array of structures can be modeled using Zometool, an elegant user-friendly version of the 61-zone structural system. These include purely mathematical models, from tilings to hyperspace projections, as well as molecular models of quasicrystals and fullerenes, and architectural space frame structures.
Zometool is a self-teaching embodiment of regular 2-, 3- and 5-fold symmetries. It models geometrical concepts, all types of space frames, and new classes of matter such as quasi-crytsals and fullerenes.
Based on the powerful 61-zone system, Zometool balls and struts represent points and lines in space. Each point generates an array of vectors along the 61 lines given by the edge midpoints, face midpoints and vertices of the dodecahedron, as well as the edge midpoints of the 5 cubes of the dodecahedron.* These vectors define struts with lengths in Golden Mean powers of one, cosine 18, cosine 30, and cosine 45 respectively:
There is no substitute for Zometool in understanding the structure of space. Discoveries of new materials such as quasi-crystals causing a "Copernican revolution"5 by revealing relationships not catalogued by crystallographers. Zometool facilitates an intuitive grasp of these spatial relationships and invites deeper exploration. True projections from up to 61 dimensions can be modeled.
For architectural space frames, Zometool provides greater versatility with a smaller inventory of parts than any other system.6 All classes of space frames including flat grids, barrel vaults and domes can be built and fused in limitless combinations using this one low-inventory, high-diversity building system.
Technical questions should be addressed to:
Paul Hildebrandt
Founder, Zometool Inc.
1.H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, 176 (1973)
2.S. Burkov, Physical Review Letters 67, 614-617 (1991)
3.R. F. Curl and R. E. Smalley, Scientific American 265-4, 54
4.R. B. Fuller and R. Marks, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, 171-175, 1973
5.D. Mermin, Physical Review Letters 68, 1172 (1992)
6.S. Baer, The 31-Zone Structural System, in H. Nooshin (ed.), Third International Conference on Space Structures, 872-875, 1984
cos 45 GreenLines
