{"id":11374,"date":"2015-12-20T07:49:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-20T06:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.richardlittledale.co.uk\/?p=11374"},"modified":"2015-12-20T08:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-12-20T07:01:09","slug":"an-augmented-rhombicuboctahedron-to-savour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/2015\/12\/20\/an-augmented-rhombicuboctahedron-to-savour\/","title":{"rendered":"An augmented rhombicuboctahedron to savour"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bringing the story together<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a particular love for the story of the star <\/a>at Christmas time. Very soon, I hope to share some exciting news about that Littlest Star<\/em> on these pages. Today, though, I would like to pay tribute to a geometry teacher in Niesky, Germany in the 1830s , who gave his students at the Boys’ School in the town some special homework.\u00a0 They were to create a 26-point star based upon the shape of an augmented rhombicuboctahedron<\/a>\u00a0(I didn’t know either), and they all went away to do it. Over the years it became something of a tradition, and on the 50th anniversary of the school a spectacular 110 point star was made. An old-boy of the school then started making the stars for sale and selling do-it-yourself instructions through his bookshop. His son then established a Christmas Star Factory<\/a><\/em> (no, really) which exists to this day. Today, Moravian stars can be found in many places around the world, and often they are spectacularly complex:<\/span><\/p>\n