vol. 18 no. 5 - September 2002 The U.S.S. Alaric is a North Carolina chapter of STARFLEET, the International Star Trek Fan Association. Starfleet and the Alaric recognize Paramount's sole ownership of all Star Trek copyrights. Annual individual member dues to the international club are $15.00 per year. U.S.S. Alaric How To Join: The U.S.S. Alaric currently does not charge local membership dues. However, since the Alaric is a Starfleet chapter, in order to join the Alaric, you must first join Starfleet. When you join, you will receive a member packet which includes a Little White Card (LWC, or LBWC). To join the Alaric, bring this verification to a meeting, or mail it to the Alaric chapter president at the address below: U.S.S. Alaric P.O. Box 2072 Asheville, NC 28802 U.S.A. Membership Renewal: The first step is to renew your membership with Starfleet. Once you receive your membership packet, send a copy of your membership card to the chapter president. It is important that you renew your Starfleet membership 2 to 3 months in advance, since it might take that long for headquarters to process it. Other means of verification include an address label from the national newsletter, or a canceled check or money order in case of delays. Alaric Meeting Schedule: The Alaric holds regular monthly meetings generally the afternoon of the second Saturday of the month, but sometimes other Saturdays of the month. We are currently meeting at members' homes. To find out the address of the next meeting, contact the club via email at AlaricRH@sprynet.com or write to the club P.O. box. Next meetings: October 12 - monthly meeting, 1 p.m. October 26 - Alaricon!, 10:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. November 9 - monthly meeting, 1 p.m. December 14 - monthly meeting, 1 p.m. Staff meetings, when necessary, are held generally the weekend before the regular monthly meeting (i.e., first Saturday of the month). However, most staff meeting-related business is conducted via email. Check out the USS Alaric's club home page at: http://home.sprynet.com/~ian/alaric/alaric.htm The U.S.S. Alaric is the oldest and first Starfleet starship in North Carolina. The Alaric's logo, a starship silhouette orbiting a Starfleet insignia over the state of North Carolina, reflects our roots. The U.S.S. Alaric, a starship in Starfleet's Region One, is the science flagship for Region One and for Starfleet. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents Carolina Communicator CC 0209 Contents: Club Information (see left) How to Join Membership Renewal Alaric Meeting Schedule Newsletter Information (see below) Next Issue Deadline Submission Guidelines Subscriptions Command Reports: Captain's Log First Officer's Log Department Reports: Chief Science Officer Chief, Computer Operations Chief, Social Sciences Ship's Chaplain/Counselor Special Report Carolina Communicator (c) 2002 by USS Alaric. Promotional materials copyrighted by Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, and other companies, and selected submissions copyrighted by individual contributors. NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Ian "Krell" Johnsson Next Issue Deadline: All submissions for the next CC are due by: November 23, 2002. Please observe the deadline. This helps get the CC out on time! Submission Guidelines: Send submissions via email to: ian@sprynet.com Please follow these guidelines: Include the submission as an attachment to your email. ASCII text file format is easiest for me to use and so is preferred; if you know html code it helps if you put in the formatting commands, but it's not required. Rule of Thumb: If you're not familiar with writing html code, it's best not to try. Large text files and picture files should be zipped. Subscriptions: The Carolina Communicator is published four times a year. You can subscribe one of two ways: To subscribe to the online electronic CC, send an email to AlaricRH@sprynet.com telling me so and include your name, mailing address, and affiliation (ship, regional position, etc.). I will send you an email every two months telling you the url for the latest published issue. To subscribe to the paper copy of the online CC, send a letter to: Carolina Communicator, P.O. Box 2072, Asheville, NC 28802. Include your name, mailing address, and a check or money order for $8.00 made payable to RICHARD HEIM. Back issues of the CC are available for $2.00 plus $1.00 S&H each.   The views expressed in the Carolina Communicator do not necessarily reflect those of the staff, or all of the members of the Alaric.   Alaric Command Reports ELECTED OFFICERS: President (Captain) - Richard Heim Vice-President (First Officer) - Dale Anderson Executive Secretary (Second Officer) - currently vacant   FCapt. Richard Heim Welcome to the September issue of the Carolina Communicator! I have some important developments to discuss, but before I get to that, I want to thank our editor, Ian Johnsson, for a great job putting together the CC! As always, without his help, the CC simply would not happen. The first development: Starting with this issue, the Carolina Communicator goes to a quarterly publication schedule from bi-monthly. The next issue will be the December 2002 issue, followed by March 2003, June 2003, September 2003, December 2003, etc. The second big item to discuss: Alaricon! is scheduled for the last Saturday of October (October 26). Alaricon will be our 20-year anniversary open house and also our major recruiting effort of the year. We have a lot of exciting things planned! Here are the details: When: Saturday, October 26, 2002, from 10:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Where: Asheville-Buncombe "Pack" Library in downtown Asheville, NC, in the basement auditorium. Pack Library is located at 67 Haywood Street, and there is a parking garage located adjacent to the building. Admission is free! But we ask that you bring some canned food to help feed the hungry in the Asheville area, which we will deliver to Manna Food Bank, one of the local charities the Alaric supports. We will have videos, games, door prizes, and more! LOTS of door prizes! Two special guests, experts in their fields: Brian Holloway will talk about designing Star Trek costumes. Ralph Roberts will talk about writing starship stories. The Alaricon web page is: http://www.ussalaric.org/alaricon.html We're really excited about Alaricon, and hope to see you there! As always, I'd like to remind everyone of the other special club activities. These include collecting Campbells product labels in support of Eliada Children's Home, and aluminum can recycling as a club fund raiser. Our XO is heading up our participation in the Vessel Readiness Certification Program. I call upon the Alaric crew to please support these activities. ALARIC WEB CONTACTS: Home page and backup: http://www.ussalaric.org/ http://home.sprynet.com/~ian/alaric/alaric.htm Online newsletters web page and backup: http://www.ussalaric.org/cc/ http://home.sprynet.com/~ian/alaric/cc/ccYYMM.htm, where YY is the year and MM is the month of the issue. REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING REPORTS For the July (0207.13) meeting, we did something special. Instead of having a general business meeting, we conducted an away team to the "Space Toys" exhibit at the Schiele Museum in Gastonia, NC. Check out my Chief Science Officer report for details. The August (0208.17) meeting was held on the third Saturday of the month at my home. After regular department chief and officer reports, we worked out details for the upcoming Alaricon open house. We also filled in the R/1 poll and discussed the upcoming 2003 IC in Greensboro, NC ... we definitely want to have a large presence at the IC, being it will be so close. David, Dale, and Richard were the winners in our monthly doorprize drawing, winning a Babylon 5 book, button, and Star Trek book. I'll end this section of my report with another plug for Pastimes. If you're looking for music, comics, or gaming material, check them out! Pastimes, 175 Weaverville Highway, Asheville, NC 28804, phone (828) 658-0588 (email pastimesnc@earthlink.net). These great folks have been distributing our newsletters and flyers for years! Tell 'em "Richard of the Alaric sent me"! That's all for this report. Live Long, and Prosper! FCapt. Richard Heim Commanding Officer, USS Alaric AlaricRH@sprynet.com Click Here to Return to Table of Contents   Cmdr. Dale Anderson This past week I contributed our Campbell soup labels to Eliada Home. And, I would like to thank David Moxley for his donations at the last Alaric meeting. I had collected enough labels to hand carry them, rather than mail them. This was my first time to physically visit their office, despite my long standing telephone and mail communications with them. I have to say that I was quite impressed with their campus. I believe that their campus is equal to their service, history and legacy, which is a pillar in our community. In their last annual report, they served 1,125 children and 752 families. This included: 305 Children/207 Families in After School/Summer Day Camp 26 Adolescent Girls/26 Families in Cummings Cottage 23 Adolescent Boys/23 Families in Reuter Cottage 13 Adolescents/13 Families in Lions Cottage 9 Adolescent girls in the Girls/9 Families in the Girls PAL Program 12 Adolescent boys in the Boys/12 Families in the Boys PAL Program 40 Children/40 Families in Day Treatment 385 Children/172 Families in the community With Counseling And Other Supportive Services To Help Them Though Critical Situations 50 Children/30 Families in the TASC Program 12 Children/9 Families in Group Home 1 Child/1 Family in Higher Education. I'm quite proud to be associated in contributing to their cause. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents

 

Alaric Department Reports

 

DEPARTMENT HEADS: Chief Science Officer - Richard Heim Chief, Computer Operations - Robert Saucier Chief, Social Sciences - Dale Anderson Chaplain/Counselor - Shirley Heim

 

Chief Science Officer

FCapt. Richard Heim

Greetings from the science laboratories of the U.S.S. Alaric. Take a moment to adjust your viewscreen and sharpen your reception of this warp transmission if you hope to get everything out of today's science class. Today's learning adventure will focus on taking care of Spaceship Earth. Not until the astronauts of North America's early moon exploration program first saw our home planet hanging in space above the lunar horizon, did we as a species realize how tiny and fragile our Earth really is. The image to the right was captured by the Apollo 8 astronauts in December 1968. Until that time, we were a planet of Nations, a people who treated the planet as a natural resource to be mined, even plundered. But this image does not represent one country or nation: It is an image of Spaceship Earth, which has been described poetically as the "cloud-whorled blue planet," the "emerald globe in a black sea." We are all dependent upon the health of this tiny blue sphere. This image represents a home which must be cared for and maintained, nurtured and nourished. Spaceship Earth is the "mothership" of all of the colonies and starships that have been sent forth by Starfleet and its predecessor agencies. We must maintain the life support system of Spaceship Earth -- keep the environment in a condition that will support life -- if we want to continue as a viable species. We have a commandment to do so from an authority older than civilization itself: We are care-takers of planet earth, tasked "to till and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). This Bible verse is also translatable as "to serve and preserve it" or "to cultivate and care for it". We are stewards of God's earth, ruling over that which is not ours (Psalm 8:6-8). http://www.targetearth.org/resources/bible_and_environment.html http://www.stewards.net/ http://www.geocities.com/gregoryjrummo/creation.htm http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c021.html How can we be good stewards of the Earth -- good maintenance engineers for Spaceship Earth? Therein lies today's science class lesson. Keep the environment clean. Reduce pollution. We are poisoning the air we breath, the water we drink, and the land we live off of when we let pollution go unchecked. We must strengthen our environmental laws, not weaken them. We are only deceiving ourselves if we allowing polluters to shift credits from one company to another without cleaning up their infrastructure. Maintain climatic conditions that will support life. Spaceship Earth orbits the sun in a narrow "habitable zone" wherein the extraterrestrial conditions (amount of sunlight, or insolation) are conducive to life. But if the planet's atmospheric composition becomes hostile to life, this habitable zone won't matter. The high altitude ozone layer protects us from deadly ultraviolet radiation ... but the ozone layer has developed "holes" in it. "Greenhouse warming" is considered a threat by many climate experts. But even if the planet doesn't warm up as much as predicted by the greenhouse models, the changes in the Hydrologic Cycle may cause more devastating floods and more frequent and widespread droughts to occur. We need to prepare for these changes or, even better, do what we can now to minimize the possibility of them happening in the future. From this perspective, the Kyoto Treaty makes a lot of sense. Maintain the health of the biosphere -- the complete enclosed ecosystem -- which supports life on Spaceship Earth. We are losing innumerable species every year. Some of these species -- especially those in tropical rain forests -- may contain the cure for cancer and other deadly diseases. As more species become extinct, we -- the human race -- become more vulnerable. Let's strengthen Spaceship Earth's IDIC -- Infinite Diversity (and health) in Infinite Combinations (of species and life). Forests play such a pivotal role in the biosphere ... they help convert the CO2 which animals produce into life-giving oxygen which we need to live. They are the home to many insect and bacterial species which may prove crucial to medical advances. Cutting down forests takes away our oxygen, destroys beneficial species, and contributes to the desertification of the area -- thus making the local climate hotter and drier. Develop more efficient technology (cars with better gas mileage, engines that pollute less) and develop non-polluting renewable forms of energy (wind, solar, and geothermal energy) as alternatives to fossil fuels. We need to put more of our resources into these efforts, not less. http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/09/09112002/s_48367.asp ENN: Cooperation essential in a shrinking world These are actions we can and should be taking to strengthen and maintain Spaceship Earth. But we must also "raise shields" and "fire phasers" at those who seek to weaken Spaceship Earth. These are the plunderers, the forces that seek to attack the environment (http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/sci-attack.html) for their own profit and gain. They are politically strong, but for the sake of Spaceship Earth, we must be stronger! End of transmission. Class dismissed. Go out, be fruitful and multiply, and Protect Spaceship Earth! The Alaric Science Department has been busy these last two months. But before I get to the report on our latest away team, I'd like to discuss the science trivia quizzes posted to the ... Science Lab The Science Lab listserver is a cool place to find news and web pages on neat developments in science. If you're interested in receiving fascinating science posts, including a list of upcoming science shows on tv each week and a weekly science trivia question and Star Trek trivia question, go to the yahoo web page and sign up! Here's how: Go to the egroups (yahoo groups) web page (http://groups.yahoo.com/) Under the "Join a Group" section, type in the name of the group to join and click on "Search". The name of the group is: Science-Lab You'll want to join the first Science-Lab group listed. A recent science trivia question was: Who was Heron of Alexandria, when did he live, and what was the aeolipile? The answer: Heron was a Greek-Egyptian mathematician, engineer, and inventor who lived during the first century A.D. (From around 10 A.D. to around 75 A.D., probably.) The aeolipile was basically a steam engine, the first ever steam-based motor. It was basically a metal ball that could turn on a metal tube that ran through it. It had two bent pipes sticking out opposite sides. Steam came in through the tube in the middle and went out through the pipes on the sides. The steam pushing out through the holes in the sides made the ball spin. Unfortunately, no one ever really used this motor. Sources: Ancient Inventions, by James & Thorpe, 1994 http://van.hep.uiuc.edu/van/qa/section/everything_else/information/950749321.htm The correct responders were: Steven Halber, Steve Gibson, Bill Downs and Alan Anderton. There were two interesting side discussions related to this question: James and Thorpe had an interesting discussion in their book. They ask, could Heron's steam engine have been harnessed for more practical purposes than being just a cute toy? To answer this question, Dr. J.G. Landels of Reading University made a working replica of the aeolipile. He discovered that the model produced a remarkable speed of rotation, no less than 1500 revolutions per minute. But there were loose joints that allowed steam to escape and other mechanical complications. Dr. Landels estimated that the efficiency of the aeolipile could have been as low as one percent, meaning a large-scale version big enough to generate a tenth of a horsepower (the strength of one man) would have consumed an enormous amount of fuel, requiring far more man-hours of work to collect than would be produced by the device. James and Thorpe also ask: Could the Greeks have invented the steam locomotive? They note that Heron could easily have developed a more efficient way of harnessing steam power if he had set his mind to it (he certainly would have been able to figure it out, and more efficient pistons and cylinders existed at the time). The answer as to why Heron and the other competent enginners of his time didn't pursue a more efficient steam engine is probably an economic one. "The potential of many inventions was never fully realized in the ancient world because of its dependence on a slave-based economy. Even if some bright spark had managed to produce a steam engine that could do the work of a hundred men, the new-fangled device would have been of little interest to industrialists, who had a ready supply of man power in the slave markets." They added a "what if" discussion by the historian Arnold Toynbee, who speculated that, if Alexander the Great hadn't died in 323 B.C., he and his dynastic heirs may have gone on to conquer Rome, Carthage, and even China, and ended up needing a means of faster communication and transportation across such a vast empire, hence they may have developed the locomotive out of necessity. Fascinating reading! Alan related an interesting anecdote: "I had to answer to this one - a couple of years ago I made up a model of this for Jacqui (then about 10-11) to take to school for a project. We punched holes in either side of a small coffee can and fitted two "L" shaped aluminium tubes with "U-Tac" (soldering would have been better). We suspended this on wire with a fishing line "swivel" in it to allow it to spin easily. You filled the can with hot or boiling water and suspended it over a candle, bunsen burner or kitchen hot plate and when the water in the can boiled - VOILA! Hero's steam engine! Very effective. Her teacher was most impressed." This is so cool! This issue's science facility discussion focuses on ... The Schiele Museum In July the U.S.S. Alaric sent an away team to the "Space Toys" exhibit at the Schiele Museum in Gastonia, North Carolina. The "Space Toys" exhibit was a series of display cases highlighting the history of tv and movie science-fiction during the 20th century. According to the brochure: Discover the place in science-fiction history held by the Star Wars and Star Trek series. Explore robotics, alien life, and other space science topics in this nostalgic exhibit containing an assemblage of 300 space toys, models of robots, aliens, spacecraft, and inventions of science-fiction. Enjoy 12 interactive displays including "Design an Alien", "Rocket Launch", "3D Tic-Tac-Toe", and "Can a Robot Tie Its Shoe?" Employ the scientific method -- ask questions, conduct investigations, use equipment and tools to gather information, and communicate your explanation to others. It was a nice stroll down memory lane. They had some fan-tas-tic models! I especially liked the models of the Discovery and HAL-9000 from 2001, the Battlestar Galactica, and the Jupiter 2. Unfortunately, they did not allow anyone to take pictures (except the one I took above). HOWEVER, at the "Space Toys" web site (http://www.amod.org/for_rent/spacetoys.asp, housed at the Museum of Discovery site, http://www.amod.org/), they posted several pictures that they have taken themselves. Also, since it is a traveling exhibit, they have posted the "Space Toys" booking schedule through April 2005. There is a lot more at The Schiele than just traveling exhibits. The Schiele is a Museum of Natural History that is a department of the City of Gastonia, North Carolina. They have: Interesting planetarium and nature and history programs, adult workshops, children's classes, and day trips, as well as a gift shop. The 18th-century Backcountry Farm is located along the Nature Trail close to the main museum parking lot. The Farm contains a log cabin and kitchen, barn, blacksmith shop, woodworking shop, and several other outbuildings. The Catawba Indian Village is also located along the Nature Trail. Several fascinating exhibit galleries, including: North Carolina Hall of Natural History - beautiful dioramas of the 5 regions of North Carolina from the mountains to the sea. Hall of North American Habitats - dioramas of Everglades, Sonoran Desert, and Alaskan tundra biomes. Hall of North American Wildlife - moose, elk, bison, and other large mammals of North America; birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals of North Carolina. Hall of Earth and Man - fossils of dinosaurs, mastodon, saber-tooth cats, and other pre-historic life; displays about Early Man; largest gem & mineral display in North Carolina. I especially liked the geologic displays in the Hall of Earth and Man. Henry Hall of the American Indian - displays of housing, tools, weapons, adornments, and utilitarian objects of 12 tribal groups of 5 regions of North America; Native voices telling their own stories. The Schiele Museum of Natural History is located at 1500 East Garrison Blvd, Gastonia, NC 28054-5199. Phone number is 704-866-6900 and their web page is http://www.schielemuseum.org/ Check out the Alaric's science department web page: http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/AlaricSci.htm FCapt. Richard Heim Chief Science Officer USS Alaric AlaricRH@sprynet.com In science news across the region, reports have been received from the Chief Science Officers of the USS Hornet (Cmdr. James "Jamie" Delantonas) and USS Jurassic (Lt.jg Joe Lamantia), in addition to the USS Alaric. Cmdr. Delantonas reported on interesting web reports he received, including: Hubble spies rose-like nebula: http://www.msnbc.com/news/807247.asp?0dm=3DN13NT Double Deception: Many Stars are Really Two ... or Four!: http://www.space.com/spacewatch/double_stars_020906.html Earth deemed older than thought: http://www.msnbc.com/news/800407.asp?pne=3Dmsn Check out the Region One Sciences web page: http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/R1Science.htm FCapt. Richard Heim Regional Division Chief, Sciences Starfleet Region One AlaricRH@sprynet.com I have made my selection for AFDC: Please welcome Brigadier General Larry Neigut (USSMALVERNE@aol.com) to the position of Assistant Fleet Division Chief for Sciences. Some of you may know Larry from his activities as Recruiting Liaison Officer, SFMC, and Science Liaison, of the Seventh Fleet; Intelligence Chief, Promotions Officer, recruiting Officer, and Editor aboard the USS Malverne; and his regular posting of Star Trek trivia questions to the Science-Lab listserver. I'm looking forward to working with Larry as he assists me in my duties as STARFLEET's Fleet Division Chief for Sciences! I recently updated the Starfleet Sciences web page (http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/starfleet-sciences.html) with links to new picture web sites, science places and away team reports, STARFLEET member science reports, and educational materials. I have also started the "Star Trek science-fiction becoming Real Science", but am anxiously looking for input on this, so if you know of any such web sites, please send their url's to me. In an effort to serve as a communications resource for the Science RDC's and RC's throughout STARFLEET, here is the latest science contact information I have: Region RDC Science RDC Contact 1 RDC FCapt. Richard Heim AlaricRH@sprynet.com P.O. Box 2072, Asheville, NC 28802 http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/R1Science.htm 2 RDC Capt. Neil Yawn CMOSNUFFY@aol.com P.O. Box 733, Graysville, AL 35073 3 RDC Capt. William Downs krazydog@juno.com Science@region3.com 2025 Peachtree Rd. NE #244, Atlanta, Ga. 30309-1421 4 RDC FCapt. Charles Flowers charles@migmaster.reno.nv.us 90 Silver Reef Drive, Reno, NV 89506-1822 5 Science Liasion FCapt. Thomas Rutledge tomkhatt@excite.com 16821 Smokey Pt Blvd #812, Arlington, WA 98223 7 Science Contact Brig. Gen. Larry S. Neigut USSMALVERNE@aol.com Box 105, 304 Parkville-Station Road, Mantua, NJ 08051-1674 10 RDC Cmdr. Nan Dooley nancyrae@alaska.net HC1, Box 500, Gakona, AK 99586 http://r10.hypbus.com/sciences.html 11 RDC Comm. Alan Yates scarab@ay.com.au 15 RDC LtCmdr. John Prushko jprushko@together.net 103 Main Street Upstairs, Vergennes, VT 05491 Science News from Around the Fleet: Capt. Yawn reports that Region 2 Sciences published the fifth issue of their bi-monthly newsletter, Exploration. He will be happy to email a copy of the pdf file to anyone who contacts him (CMOSNUFFY@aol.com), and any Science officer may submit an article to the newsletter. This is a really great newsletter, containing science news and articles from the R/2 RDC, ARDC, and RC. Check it out! The USS Southern Cross, in Region 11, has published the premiere issue of the ship's science newsletter. It is put out by the Southern Cross's Chief Science Officer, Alan Anderton (aanderto@railservices.com.au), a fellow science enthusiast who has provided tons of info for the Starfleet Sciences web page and Science-Lab listserver. And he puts out a nifty newsletter, too! Thank you to all for your reports! FCapt. Richard Heim Fleet Division Chief, Sciences STARFLEET fdp-science@sfi.org Click Here to Return to Table of Contents

 

Chief, Computer Operations

Ensign Robert Saucier

[Editor's Note: Chief Saucier is currently off-line. He may have been bytten by some bug, or maybe even a full fledged virus. I certainly hope his innoculations are up-to-date, it would be a shame if he were to suffer any memory lose as a result. Well, I've used up just about all the computer puns I can think of, so hopefully the Chief will have something for me next issue. - Krell] Click Here to Return to Table of Contents

 

Special Report

by Joe McCollum Greetings from Knoxville! A local radio announcer, Hallerin Hilton Hill, signs on every hour with "today is a brand new day. It has never been lived before. It is a blank canvas. If you will it so, it can be your masterpiece." Well, we time travelers know that isn't quite true, but that's another story. Our ship's counselor Shirley Heim considers quilts as artwork, and one popular quilt pattern is based on the hexagon. Hexagons, triangles, and squares tessellate the plane. That is, an entire quilt could be made of regular hexagons and no other shape. Well, if your quilt is rectangular, and you get to the edge, you may have to use some half-hexagons. Honeybees use the hexagon in construction of honeycombs. Cell phone towers are laid out on a hex grid, because hexagons resemble circles better than any other shape. There will be less overlap and underlap of the cell phone signals if hexagons are used. The method that follows shows how hexagons may tesselate the whole world. With this method, there will always be 12 pentagons left over. To begin with, one starts with an icosahedron. That is a solid with twenty faces, all of which are equilateral triangles. The icosahedron more closely resembles a sphere than any other platonic solid. There are several different methods to project a sphere to an icosahedron. One method involves the gnomonic projection. This one is mathematically easy but there is significant area distortion. Buckminster Fuller invented a projection that is almost equal-area. John Snyder invented a truly equal-area projection called the Icosahedral Snyder Equal Area projection. The first method is shown with the earth projected to it: To put hexagons on the globe, one must first tesselate the icosahedron with triangles, and then group the triangles in sixes. The first step looks like this: One can see that this pattern does indeed form 20 hexagons plus 12 pentagons. Geometers call this figure a truncated icosahedron. Athletes call it a soccer ball. Virologists know it as the structure of a virus with triangulation number T = 3. In order to get more hexagons, one continues to make smaller and smaller triangles. The next step looks like this: There are now 110 triangles and 12 pentagons. I am calling this the triangle orientation. If one continues to tesselate in this way, at each step there will be 180n2 triangles. Twelve pentagons will consume 60 triangles, leaving enough triangles for 30n2 - 10 hexagons. One may tilt the framework for a differing number of triangles. What I am calling the chevron orientation looks like this: There are intermediate steps between the chevron and the triangle orientations. In general, one hexagon may be elegantly decomposed into other hexagons according to the formula T = h2 + hk + k2. If k = 0, then T = h2, and what remains is the triangle orientation. If k = h, then T = 3 h2, or the chevron orientation. Click Here to Return to Table of Contents

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