Object Details
- Description
- This white plaster model has numerous flat faces which include triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, a hexagon and an octagon. It is one of a series of models designed by A. Schoenflies in Göttingen to illustrate the regular partition of space. Schoenflies designed “stones" which could be arranged into larger blocks like this one (sometimes with congruent stones and sometimes, as in this case, using stones that were mirror images of one another). The series was first published by Brill in 1891. The plaster stones that comprise the object with museum number 1985.0112.168 could be arranged to form this block with museum number 1985.0112.165. The stones are marked with the letters S and C, indicating whether they adjoin congruent or mirror image stones. Three stones are mirror images of the three others. A model of this block and stones at the University of Göttingen (#327 in their collection) has six stones and a block. The Smithsonian collections also include six stones and a block.
- This example of the model was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition, a World’s Fair held in Chicago in 1893.
- References:
- L. Brill, Catalog mathematischer Modelle. . ., Darmstadt: L. Brill, 1892, pp. 46-47, 90-91.
- A Schoenflies, “Uber Reguläre Gebietstheilungen des Raumes,” Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, #9, June 27, 1888, pp. 223-237.
- Göttingen Collection of Mathematical Models, presently online at http://modellsammlung.uni-goettingen.de/, accessed September 6, 2019.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- maker
- L. Brill
- date made
- 1892
- Credit Line
- Gift of Wesleyan University
- Physical Description
- plaster (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 10 cm x 16 cm x 11 cm; 3 15/16 in x 6 5/16 in x 4 11/32 in
- Object Name
- geometric model
- geometric model
