Bridges 2026 preview

 

These are the steps to making a compact dodecahedron (see the compact octahedron shown here) from faces made from 5 coffee stirrers. This is new work and the start is to make the reciprocating frame sides using the black jig and a cad image showing the right placement of sticks relative to the jig. An stl for the jig is here.

 

All the sides, and 

The sides made into a dodecaheron with a spare side

 

The dodecahedron

There are 2 types of dodecahedron available from these sides. I've made the version shown in purple above, which has the edge joins near the corners. As shown below in "net" and "link" versions, the links created are different.

Hi

Last year I attended a maths and arts conference called Bridges. I'm a retired engineer and dabbling in the maths and arts fields is fun, interesting and challenging for me. It's lucky that I've been an engineer and now live in a time where there are affordable computers, 3D CAD packages and 3D printers. This means I can use and access some powerful artistic tools. 

At the end of last year, the chance came up to present at a local maths conference - it had a Maths and Arts lecture stream and a Maths and Art exhibition and I came up with some new work for that. It's not officially published as there are no conference proceedings, and there was no requirement to submit a paper in conjunction with the conference. That was good as it was easy to get a foot in the door and make the presentation, but not good as no legitimate publication resulted. I've unofficially published anyway, just parking the presentations along with the 3D printed parts required to replicate my work which on thingiverse here and here. 

Now all the rush to produce the work for the conference is over and so is a summer holiday season. Hopefully also the horrible hot summer weather and bushfires are over also! Anyway, its February now and I've sort of been spat out into the new year and need to work out what I want to do with it. The chance to present at and attend Bridges 2026 is there, and having presented at the local maths conference there's some material I can write up. But but when I looked at the deadline for papers it was an oh sh!* moment. The deadline for standard 8 page papers is already past, and if I want to write a short paper or run a workshop then I need to write and submit in February. 

Meanwhile, after not thinking about maths stuff for a bit over a month, I have returned to it now and am starting to see the work I did in late 2025 from a different perspective and am making and calculating new arrangements of parts from the jigs I made last year. An example is shown above.

There are some nice templates for short papers on the work already done. I had heard of Doris Schatschneider before Bridges last year and met her briefly at the conference. She has written a nice paper on some of M.C. Escher's commercial artwork and its in the monumentous and free Bridges archive here. Four Pages doesn't sound like much but they are four squishy pages which use a small font (1800 words or so) and still manage to fit in some nice illustrations. For the workshop papers somebody I know from Melbourne is the chair of the sessions, and I attended 2 workhop sessions last year. It cannot be that hard!

So the plan for now is to write a 4 pager and have it ready to go, and then work on a workshop session and paper. If I'm not happy with the workshop paper I will be able to fall back on the 4 pager.

Wish me luck! 

Update, Feb 9, 2026

While watching Dog Park on ABC iview,  I finished the second dodecahedron version I'd mentioned and sketched above. pics are below. 

The 2 types of dodecahedron which can be made from the same side.

Several 5 stick bands can be seen in these structures which are topological links. On one, the bands are outside the pentagon shape and an the other they are inside.

New Dodecahedron with side

New dodecahedron