[Edu-sig] Using YouTube

[kirby urner]

Once again, I was so happy to have Python + VPython handy for my
geometrical studies, what brought me to Python in the first place, by
way of Java, trying to write scene description language for a ray
tracer at first (POV-Ray, still using it), then VRML (today x3d), then
finally, real time (VPython).

Given I'm so focused on such spatial-slash-polyhedral studies, I've
never been able to get away with just "flat stuff", consider SVG,
Pygame and even Flash mostly flat.  Java3D is good for round stuff, or
whatever Scott Vorthmann is using to write vZome, the virtual Zome
builder and free Java download.

Ruby also good at integrating OpenGL, expect lots of good curriculum
writing for that language already in the pipeline.

I'll be interested to see if VPython comes out with a 3.x edition and
how soon, as there's some tendency in the teaching community to start
right in with the new syntax, not go with the old "print" only to have
to relearn the new one, plus so many new shortcuts and add-ons to
master, why waste time with 2.x? (is the attitude).

Anyway, here was today's effort, stemming from lengthy investigations
going on in Minnesota involving dissections and assemblies of
five-fold symmetric polyhedra such as the rhombic triacontahedron,
always looking for bridges between four and five fold:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEpnOE9Cw_Y

What you've got here is a rhombic triacontahedron "shrink wrapped"
around a sphere of unit radius, then blown up by a scale factor to a
volume of precisely 7.5, only to intersect with a rhombic dodecahedron
likewise shrink wrapped, of volume 6 (all volumes in tetravolumes).
The 7.5 volumed shape has radius phi/sqrt(2).  This all goes by pretty
fast in Akbar font, then goes to the VPython canvas, for some insider
views. :)

Kirby
4D