There Can Be Only Five

These Platonic Solids – made out of playing cards – are one of the contributions my 8th graders are creating to exhibit during our Grade 5-8 Math and Art Festival next week.  The templates I used were from Jason at Mathcraft and George Hart.  Thanks to cheesemonkeysf for sending a Tweet out to share this resource.

Platonic Solid 1 Platonic Solid 2 Platonic Solid 3 Platonic Solid 4

Students had to articulate the characteristics of the five Platonic Solids, and describe in writing how their cards represented each solid.  Can you believe that there are really only FIVE of these?  It totally seems that there should be more!  My students and I spent some time looking for that elusive Platonic Solid #6.  I asked students to define in their own words each of the Platonic Solids.  These writings will accompany their displays.  I’m looking to challenge them a little further – if you have another idea or resource for a more complex card construction, leave a comment. (Thanks!)

For the few students who were ready for this, I had some reading available about the Duality of Platonic Solids, along with an inductive proof that “there can be only five” possible Platonic Solids (…wait is this where the idea for Highlander came from!?).

 

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