Between school, homework, practice and spending time with loved ones, it’s easy to miss out on the latest in science, technology, engineering, art and math. But don’t worry, Thinkery’s got you covered. Here are some of our favorite STEAM discoveries from the previous week. It’s fuel for your weekend.
Platonic solids are three-dimensional shapes with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp vertices. Each face is a regular polygon of the same shape and size. They’ve got cool names—tetrahedron, hexahedron (cube), octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron—and they’re lots of fun to make, too! Print, cut and fold these mathematical shapes from Howtoons. Create game dice or use as templates for larger shapes.
French artist Mademoiselle Maurice is back at it again! In her stunning new mural, The Lunar Cycle, 15,000 origami birds form the different phases of the moon. The 21,000-square-foot temporary installation, created in collaboration with Mathgoth Gallerie, is the largest urban mural ever created in Paris.
Tessellations are patterns of shapes that fit perfectly together. The shapes cover a plane without any gaps or overlaps—a seamless blend of both art and geometry. The repetition is mesmerizing, and paper artist Polly Verity’s intricate tessellating patterns are no exception. The precision, detail and dexterity in each of Polly’s sculptures is without parallel. Take a look!
Data analysts at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Laboratory analyzed more than 1,700 stories from Project Gutenberg’s fiction collection to reveal the most common emotional arcs in literature.
In order to achieve accurate results, the stories had to be between 10,000 and 200,000 words in length. They then ran the 1,700 stories through a sentiment analysis to generate emotional arcs for each work. After mining the data, researchers found “six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives.”
The six emotional arcs?
- “Rags to riches” (rise)
- “Tragedy,” or “riches to rags” (fall)
- “Man in a hole” (fall–rise)
- “Icarus” (rise–fall)
- “Cinderella” (rise–fall–rise)
- “Oedipus” (fall–rise–fall)
Click here to learn more about their study—and their fascinating results!